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The point about optimism is very interesting and I completely agree re: ambition - hard problems are more feasible than easy ones. However, I don't agree with t

The point about optimism is very interesting and I completely agree re: ambition - hard problems are more feasible than easy ones. However, I don't agree with the point about ad clicks. > "Ambitious problems for Stripe look like enabling more internet businesses and supporting entrepreneurs in more countries, not getting more ad clicks." I used to have a similar mindset until I actually ended up working on Ads at Google. There are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of small business merchants, mom and pop stores, etc that rely on ads (be that Google, Facebook, Instagram, whatever) to run their businesses. In fact, these are the vast majority of ad buyers! The huge multi-billion dollar corporations are far and few between. That's what drove many of the engineers (including myself). A small increase in conversion ratio (be that through better ranking, filtering, query interpretation, etc) meant a huge deal to these merchants and in some cases, could be the difference between life and death for some of these small companies. And at the scale Google operates at, very small incremental changes = huge impact. The engineers and projects, at least in my team, were driven by exactly the same goals mentioned here - to "enable more businesses" and "support entrepreneurs" all across the world. It's easy to get sucked into the hype and blanket statements of "ads are bad" (I was guilty of that too). I've since left Google, but that experience really internalized for me that things like this are never so black and white.

Allower 7y ago
I don't believe this for a second. You done been duped son
ace_of_spades 7y ago
thanks for this interesting perspective, I haven’t really thought about ads from this point of view before. However, does the desire of advertisement buyers to convert justify the profiling and tracking of peoples behaviors to the extent that it is happening? You don’t seem to provide any reasonable justification beyond that not only big but also small companies profit from this state of affairs. This doesn’t make the power and behavior of google any less creepy or undesirable.
- awillen 7y ago
  The justification is that better ads convert more, as he mentioned in his post. Making ads more efficient means a small, niche business can effectively spend money on ads that drive business. If you can't target well, then giant companies whose audiences are very broad are the only ones who can justify paying for ads. That's why TV advertising is dominated by huge companies - Budweiser/Chevy/etc. want everyone to see their ads, but John's vintage typewriter store will only spend money on ads if they can target customers in their geographic area with a very specific interest at a reasonable price. Of course, the big part of your question is "to the extent that it is happening" - there's definitely an argument to be made that they're collecting too much info, but my point is merely to say that this kind of information collection allows for the kind of granular audience targeting that is disproportionately beneficial to small, niche businesses.
  - ace_of_spades 7y ago
    Yeah, thank you for your second paragraph because that‘s exactly the point where things go off the rails. We could have granular geo-location and context (i.e., keywords) based targeting to satisfy smaller customers. Did anybody specifically complain about this when that was still the state of affairs? Business is a relative project where your profit doesn‘t really depend on the absolute capabilities that you are using but your relative advantage over your competitors. If fine-grained targeting wasn‘t available then small businesses would do fine without it. So the real problem is the competition between google, facebook, amazon and others which leaves users as the products. We would probably need some like an arms control treaty to tame these behemoths and make this situation somewhat sustainable in the long run.
DenisM 7y ago
Three small businesses can easily end up bidding against each other on Google Ads for the same keywords, higher and higher, until they drive each other to the point of having precisely zero profit left to them, and all of the profit going to Google. Making money is all well and good, but this is not empowering anyone.
- rogerkirkness 7y ago
  Much of small business is about geographic monopoly where simply putting yourself in front of customers that didn't know about you before is wealth creating.
  - DenisM 7y ago
    That's a good point, though I have to wonder how often is there an actual micro-monopoly? I imagine that two dry-cleaning places a mile away from each other would end up in competition eventually, and Google will drain all the profits from both. Something is fundamentally unbalanced about this.
    - rogerkirkness 7y ago
      Coffee shops can be make or break depending on the corner of the intersection they are on so it can be a little bit ridiculous in terms of how small the geography is. I agree re: Google capturing the spread. Always want to control the means of distribution for your own business, ultimately.
- repolfx 7y ago
  You can argue that about any limited resource for which firms are in competition, like land. Unlike most resources though, Google ads take into account a quality score, so if one of those merchants is lower quality than the rest e.g. users go back from the store to keep searching more often, then they'll have to pay more and all other things being equal, the more useful merchants will outcompete them. In practice AdWords does enable many businesses that would otherwise find it too hard to reach a niche audience, and wouldn't be able to rank organically for a keyword because they have no inbound links.
blub 7y ago
Ads are definitely not bad for Google and its employees, because they're a money printing machine for a company that's essentially an online ad monopoly. Whether this is good for the small business merchants is questionable, since it turns out your ex-employer was literally stealing the money those companies/individuals were earning through ads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103280. In the linked thread you can even read some testimonials from small merchants which you and many of the engineers were "helping". Ads are definitely bad for regular humans though: * they waste their computing resources and make their devices slow & use up the battery * they serve malware (Google got hit too) * they spy on them * they distract and manipulate them * etc Ironically, they're also bad for the software industry, since now customers are used to getting things for "free", so many are no longer paying for software, undermining the revenue stream of... small business merchants. With friends and helpers like these, business merchants would probably rather get punched in the face.
randomsearch 7y ago
That’s actually really interesting to hear, although tbh I strongly disagree. Serious question: did you and fellow googlers ever have discussions like “what if that argument is actually not true? What if it’s just a convenient rationalisation?” I think even if you dismissed that POV, it’s a sign of a healthy culture that you can question the mission, even if you then decide it’s right.

Allower 7y ago

I don't believe this for a second. You done been duped son

ace_of_spades 7y ago

thanks for this interesting perspective, I haven’t really thought about ads from this point of view before. However, does the desire of advertisement buyers to convert justify the profiling and tracking of peoples behaviors to the extent that it is happening? You don’t seem to provide any reasonable justification beyond that not only big but also small companies profit from this state of affairs. This doesn’t make the power and behavior of google any less creepy or undesirable.

awillen 7y ago
The justification is that better ads convert more, as he mentioned in his post. Making ads more efficient means a small, niche business can effectively spend money on ads that drive business. If you can't target well, then giant companies whose audiences are very broad are the only ones who can justify paying for ads. That's why TV advertising is dominated by huge companies - Budweiser/Chevy/etc. want everyone to see their ads, but John's vintage typewriter store will only spend money on ads if they can target customers in their geographic area with a very specific interest at a reasonable price. Of course, the big part of your question is "to the extent that it is happening" - there's definitely an argument to be made that they're collecting too much info, but my point is merely to say that this kind of information collection allows for the kind of granular audience targeting that is disproportionately beneficial to small, niche businesses.
- ace_of_spades 7y ago
  Yeah, thank you for your second paragraph because that‘s exactly the point where things go off the rails. We could have granular geo-location and context (i.e., keywords) based targeting to satisfy smaller customers. Did anybody specifically complain about this when that was still the state of affairs? Business is a relative project where your profit doesn‘t really depend on the absolute capabilities that you are using but your relative advantage over your competitors. If fine-grained targeting wasn‘t available then small businesses would do fine without it. So the real problem is the competition between google, facebook, amazon and others which leaves users as the products. We would probably need some like an arms control treaty to tame these behemoths and make this situation somewhat sustainable in the long run.

DenisM 7y ago

Three small businesses can easily end up bidding against each other on Google Ads for the same keywords, higher and higher, until they drive each other to the point of having precisely zero profit left to them, and all of the profit going to Google. Making money is all well and good, but this is not empowering anyone.

rogerkirkness 7y ago
Much of small business is about geographic monopoly where simply putting yourself in front of customers that didn't know about you before is wealth creating.
- DenisM 7y ago
  That's a good point, though I have to wonder how often is there an actual micro-monopoly? I imagine that two dry-cleaning places a mile away from each other would end up in competition eventually, and Google will drain all the profits from both. Something is fundamentally unbalanced about this.
  - rogerkirkness 7y ago
    Coffee shops can be make or break depending on the corner of the intersection they are on so it can be a little bit ridiculous in terms of how small the geography is. I agree re: Google capturing the spread. Always want to control the means of distribution for your own business, ultimately.
repolfx 7y ago
You can argue that about any limited resource for which firms are in competition, like land. Unlike most resources though, Google ads take into account a quality score, so if one of those merchants is lower quality than the rest e.g. users go back from the store to keep searching more often, then they'll have to pay more and all other things being equal, the more useful merchants will outcompete them. In practice AdWords does enable many businesses that would otherwise find it too hard to reach a niche audience, and wouldn't be able to rank organically for a keyword because they have no inbound links.

blub 7y ago

Ads are definitely not bad for Google and its employees, because they're a money printing machine for a company that's essentially an online ad monopoly. Whether this is good for the small business merchants is questionable, since it turns out your ex-employer was literally stealing the money those companies/individuals were earning through ads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103280. In the linked thread you can even read some testimonials from small merchants which you and many of the engineers were "helping". Ads are definitely bad for regular humans though: * they waste their computing resources and make their devices slow & use up the battery * they serve malware (Google got hit too) * they spy on them * they distract and manipulate them * etc Ironically, they're also bad for the software industry, since now customers are used to getting things for "free", so many are no longer paying for software, undermining the revenue stream of... small business merchants. With friends and helpers like these, business merchants would probably rather get punched in the face.

randomsearch 7y ago

That’s actually really interesting to hear, although tbh I strongly disagree. Serious question: did you and fellow googlers ever have discussions like “what if that argument is actually not true? What if it’s just a convenient rationalisation?” I think even if you dismissed that POV, it’s a sign of a healthy culture that you can question the mission, even if you then decide it’s right.