A product is something you sell to a customer. IMO, Emacs is one of the best pieces of code that the FSF makes, but there's an important sense in which it's no

A product is something you sell to a customer. IMO, Emacs is one of the best pieces of code that the FSF makes, but there's an important sense in which it's not accurate to call it a "product" of theirs. Google sells advertising space to advertisers, while they give away search and maps to the users to facilitate the selling of said advertising. (GMail is an exception because they offer business products built out of GMail.) The fact that search might not be considered a product need not reflect a value judgment. Either way, it is a very nice service they provide. But when people refer to Google as an advertising company rather than a search company, they are correct from a business standpoint. Likewise, many media companies -- whether like the New York Times or like Daring Fireball -- have always "really" been in the advertising sales business. (Though some, like the Times are also in the content sales business.) Those companies obviously take great pride in the content they produce that draw the eyeballs to those ads, but it wouldn't be a viable business if the content was all they did.