4 ms·

These things do not need to be mutually exclusive. Google has an advertising platform on top of a search engine.

soperj 4y ago
When the majority of the results you get on the first page are paid for, then it's an advertising platform masquerading as a search engine.
- mrkramer 4y ago
  Google claims that majority of search queries do not return ads but the most common and the most popular search queries return a lot of ads as we can witness.
- GeekyBear 4y ago
  Which is something Google used to make fun of it's competitors for doing, back when they were the underdog.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    Then they introduced one ad per search, which was a big deal people talked about. Now we don't talk about it enough.
- rco8786 4y ago
  That's an arbitrary rule that we've made up. The search engine still exists. The advertising platform would not exist without it. The % of ads on the first page of the search results is a detail of how the two co-exist, not evidence that there is only one and not the other.
  - soperj 4y ago
    > The advertising platform would not exist without it. Considering how many people even get past those ads... tough to make that argument.
    - rco8786 4y ago
      How? Literally millions of people get past the ads every day. Maybe even hundreds of millions.
koyanisqatsi 4y ago
It would be interesting to see how much of their revenue is advertising and how much is everything else because I'm almost certain the bulk of it is mostly advertising [0]. 0: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-revenue-of-google/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-reven...
- rco8786 4y ago
  Yes, Google's revenue has always been driven by advertising. This has not changed in decades.
  - koyanisqatsi 4y ago
    Do you think the advertising model is sustainable? I personally don't think it is because as an advertising network that gives a cut of its proceeds to various sites that host ads from their network they're incentivized to look the other way when it comes to SEO spam. So as Google has gotten larger so has the problem of SEO spam (which is mostly content designed to hack the Google ranking algorithm to earn a cut of revenue from the clickstream controlled and managed by Google). SEO spammers are incentivized by Google to create incoherent content that Google itself ranks highly because it increases their main source of revenue. This is why I think their model is not sustainable. Eventually the web will be saturated with adversarial SEO spam instead of information curated by people.
    - mrkramer 4y ago
      If that happens people will abandon "Open Web" and will only use "Walled Gardens" like FB, IG, Twitter, LinkedIn, YT, TikTok, Reddit, Discord etc. That would be tragic.
      - koyanisqatsi 4y ago
        I think people do this now already. How many people do you know that host their content on open platforms?
blaser-waffle 4y ago
It's just that the search engine is getting worse, to the benefit of the advertising platform.

When the majority of the results you get on the first page are paid for, then it's an advertising platform masquerading as a search engine.

mrkramer 4y ago
Google claims that majority of search queries do not return ads but the most common and the most popular search queries return a lot of ads as we can witness.
GeekyBear 4y ago
Which is something Google used to make fun of it's competitors for doing, back when they were the underdog.
- hinkley 4y ago
  Then they introduced one ad per search, which was a big deal people talked about. Now we don't talk about it enough.
rco8786 4y ago
That's an arbitrary rule that we've made up. The search engine still exists. The advertising platform would not exist without it. The % of ads on the first page of the search results is a detail of how the two co-exist, not evidence that there is only one and not the other.
- soperj 4y ago
  > The advertising platform would not exist without it. Considering how many people even get past those ads... tough to make that argument.
  - rco8786 4y ago
    How? Literally millions of people get past the ads every day. Maybe even hundreds of millions.

koyanisqatsi 4y ago

It would be interesting to see how much of their revenue is advertising and how much is everything else because I'm almost certain the bulk of it is mostly advertising [0]. 0: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-revenue-of-google/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-reven...

rco8786 4y ago
Yes, Google's revenue has always been driven by advertising. This has not changed in decades.
- koyanisqatsi 4y ago
  Do you think the advertising model is sustainable? I personally don't think it is because as an advertising network that gives a cut of its proceeds to various sites that host ads from their network they're incentivized to look the other way when it comes to SEO spam. So as Google has gotten larger so has the problem of SEO spam (which is mostly content designed to hack the Google ranking algorithm to earn a cut of revenue from the clickstream controlled and managed by Google). SEO spammers are incentivized by Google to create incoherent content that Google itself ranks highly because it increases their main source of revenue. This is why I think their model is not sustainable. Eventually the web will be saturated with adversarial SEO spam instead of information curated by people.
  - mrkramer 4y ago
    If that happens people will abandon "Open Web" and will only use "Walled Gardens" like FB, IG, Twitter, LinkedIn, YT, TikTok, Reddit, Discord etc. That would be tragic.
    - koyanisqatsi 4y ago
      I think people do this now already. How many people do you know that host their content on open platforms?

blaser-waffle 4y ago

It's just that the search engine is getting worse, to the benefit of the advertising platform.