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> What business is Google in? If you said search, guess again. Really? Advertising, search ... semantics. Everyone knows that AdSense/Adwords is Googles money

> What business is Google in? If you said search, guess again. Really? Advertising, search ... semantics. Everyone knows that AdSense/Adwords is Googles money making machine

sukuriant 15y ago
No, sorry. They're two very different things. Search would be, to the general public, providing answers to questions they have. No one should say search upon any analysis, though, because search in and of itself isn't likely to make money -- well, except for selling unique user's searching habits to other companies for demographics information so that THEY can create better ads. Advertising, on the other hand, is what happens when you weight certain search results higher than others because they pay you more money, or when you, as Google does, separate out potentially interesting advertisements for you to click on. You can run a search engine without being a business, without making money, and without having advertisements or search results weighted by how much money they gave you. That said, how does Duck Duck Go make money?
- saurik 15y ago
  That all makes "search" an inexact answer, not an incorrect one; akin to answering "their stores" for "how does Best Buy make money?" as opposed to "selling products"; your "normal" person will just look at you cross-eyed for that correction and complain about "semantics". (That said, I agree with you that not analyzing it far enough to at least get to the also-vague-sounding "advertising" is probably not actable.)
  - dangrossman 15y ago
    $11 billion of Google's ad revenue is from non-Google websites. They run the largest display advertising network in the world (thanks to the DoubleClick acquisition). Search is just one channel for their ads.
    - bmuon 15y ago
      That was totally missing in the article. It'd be really interesting to see the difference between display advertising and ads in search results.
      - saurik 15y ago
        From the actual filings this article is making those pie charts with, Google reports 72% of their advertising revenue comes from websites they operate. They also reported paying 51% (AdSense for Search) and 68% (AdSense for Content) of the fees (which they defined as the revenue) to the "Google Network Member". Doing the math out, that would indicate that the advertising profit from their own websites accounts for 85-90% of their total profit from advertising. In essence, the fact that they "run the largest display advertising network in the world" is actually in any way "where they make the money". (Of course, the money they get from that isn't "chump change", and I'd even make the argument that if they didn't run that off-Google advertising network their core advertising business would have less content available.).
rbanffy 15y ago
Unless you pay for it, search itself won't be a revenue driver.

> What business is Google in? If you said search, guess again. Really? Advertising, search ... semantics. Everyone knows that AdSense/Adwords is Googles money making machine

sukuriant 15y ago

No, sorry. They're two very different things. Search would be, to the general public, providing answers to questions they have. No one should say search upon any analysis, though, because search in and of itself isn't likely to make money -- well, except for selling unique user's searching habits to other companies for demographics information so that THEY can create better ads. Advertising, on the other hand, is what happens when you weight certain search results higher than others because they pay you more money, or when you, as Google does, separate out potentially interesting advertisements for you to click on. You can run a search engine without being a business, without making money, and without having advertisements or search results weighted by how much money they gave you. That said, how does Duck Duck Go make money?

saurik 15y ago
That all makes "search" an inexact answer, not an incorrect one; akin to answering "their stores" for "how does Best Buy make money?" as opposed to "selling products"; your "normal" person will just look at you cross-eyed for that correction and complain about "semantics". (That said, I agree with you that not analyzing it far enough to at least get to the also-vague-sounding "advertising" is probably not actable.)
- dangrossman 15y ago
  $11 billion of Google's ad revenue is from non-Google websites. They run the largest display advertising network in the world (thanks to the DoubleClick acquisition). Search is just one channel for their ads.
  - bmuon 15y ago
    That was totally missing in the article. It'd be really interesting to see the difference between display advertising and ads in search results.
    - saurik 15y ago
      From the actual filings this article is making those pie charts with, Google reports 72% of their advertising revenue comes from websites they operate. They also reported paying 51% (AdSense for Search) and 68% (AdSense for Content) of the fees (which they defined as the revenue) to the "Google Network Member". Doing the math out, that would indicate that the advertising profit from their own websites accounts for 85-90% of their total profit from advertising. In essence, the fact that they "run the largest display advertising network in the world" is actually in any way "where they make the money". (Of course, the money they get from that isn't "chump change", and I'd even make the argument that if they didn't run that off-Google advertising network their core advertising business would have less content available.).

rbanffy 15y ago

Unless you pay for it, search itself won't be a revenue driver.