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Google didn't gain a competitive advantage because they were profitable early (they were profitable, but only marginally so). They had an advantage because of

Google didn't gain a competitive advantage because they were profitable early (they were profitable, but only marginally so). They had an advantage because of the traction (significant year over year growth) they had as well as their ability to scale economically. If Google didn't raise big money, they wouldn't have went on to do as many early acquisitions. Without those acquisitions, they don't stumble onto adwords/adsense and they remain a mildly profitable company.

cppsnob 15y ago
> If Google didn't raise big money, they wouldn't have went on to do as many early acquisitions. Without those acquisitions, they don't stumble onto adwords/adsense Adwords was out for around 6 months before the company's very first acquisition, DejaNews. http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/history.html http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/history.html Google quickly became insanely profitable after launching adwords. They only ever took $25MM in private funding. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#Financing_and_initial_public_offering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#Financing_and... I'm curious as to how you arrived at the assertions you made.
- viscanti 15y ago
  Fair enough, that's a valid question. I arrived at my assertion by looking at the financials. http://investor.google.com/financial/2005/tables.html http://investor.google.com/financial/2005/tables.html Google make the vast majority of their money through ads (no surprise). Adwords didn't take off until they acquired Applied Semantics (for semantic processing) and Sprinks (contextual aware ads). It may have existed pre-acquisitions, but it didn't look anything like the current version, and wasn't anywhere near as profitable.
jpdoctor 15y ago
> (they were profitable, but only marginally so) That is the point. It is why Larry and Sergey retained such a percentage of the company in the A round; They had an alternative.

cppsnob 15y ago

> If Google didn't raise big money, they wouldn't have went on to do as many early acquisitions. Without those acquisitions, they don't stumble onto adwords/adsense Adwords was out for around 6 months before the company's very first acquisition, DejaNews. http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/history.html http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/history.html Google quickly became insanely profitable after launching adwords. They only ever took $25MM in private funding. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#Financing_and_initial_public_offering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#Financing_and... I'm curious as to how you arrived at the assertions you made.

viscanti 15y ago
Fair enough, that's a valid question. I arrived at my assertion by looking at the financials. http://investor.google.com/financial/2005/tables.html http://investor.google.com/financial/2005/tables.html Google make the vast majority of their money through ads (no surprise). Adwords didn't take off until they acquired Applied Semantics (for semantic processing) and Sprinks (contextual aware ads). It may have existed pre-acquisitions, but it didn't look anything like the current version, and wasn't anywhere near as profitable.

jpdoctor 15y ago

> (they were profitable, but only marginally so) That is the point. It is why Larry and Sergey retained such a percentage of the company in the A round; They had an alternative.