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It's a rather standard tech company model: you build a product so good it becomes indispensable, then you stick the customers in a vice and squeeze until all th
by causality0 5y ago
It's a rather standard tech company model: you build a product so good it becomes indispensable, then you stick the customers in a vice and squeeze until all the money comes out. "Produce the best search results" hasn't been the guiding principle for a good decade now.
"Not growing is failing" is the most toxic principle of modern business. There is a finite amount of people, of money to be made. Ever-increasing income is fundamentally impossible. When you can't increase revenue by further improving your product, you increase revenue by making the same product more profitable, which generally means a worse product. In the eyes of the business major, the ideal business is one in which all of your customers hate you not quite enough to stop using you.
- tryauuum 5y agoThat last line is enlightening.
- AndrewSwift 5y agoI would just answer: ad buyers are Google's clients, and users are more like fodder. Not an original thought, I know. I would be interested to know what major users of Google's advertising services think about the quality of their services recently.
- is_true 5y agoIt depends, i don't think anyone is happy having to buy ads for your own brand when you are organically the 1st result. Another thing I saw is that now adsense has full page size ads, like modals. I remember the times, around 2010, when having too many ad units together could get you banned.