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Ads in Search make up a significant percentage of their revenue. It is also the gateway that gets people into the Google ecosystem. Ads make the money, but Sea

Ads in Search make up a significant percentage of their revenue. It is also the gateway that gets people into the Google ecosystem. Ads make the money, but Search is still the consumer facing product that brings people to Google and keeps them there. It’s so ubiquitous people don’t even think about it or notice it anymore. I’m always surprised by how much people are still searching for stuff as we’ve moved from the open web to various platforms (Amazon, TikTok, Facebook, etc), but every time I see Google’s revenue breakdown I’m shocked by just how important Search still is to their business. This is from 2024, but shows Search accounting for nearly 57% of revenue. Yes, this is made possible by the AdWords business, but without Search, that 57% goes away, unless that traffic goes to a 3rd party that is also using AdWords and Google were to make the same from 3rd party ads as 1st party. I find that doubtful. https://www.doofinder.com/en/statistics/google-revenue-breakdown https://www.doofinder.com/en/statistics/google-revenue-break...

48terry 5mo ago
> It’s so ubiquitous people don’t even think about it or notice it anymore. Which is kind of the scary hazard for Google. They made people notice search by their announcements. They drew attention to the thing people took for granted as just how things work. People suddenly have a reason to look critically at it. Google has to hope to god the attention they receive back is actually positive.
godelski 5mo ago
> but Search is still the consumer facing product that brings people to Google and keeps them there. And let's not forget, these are the same people that when searching for "eBay" will put an ad at the top of the results, linking to eBay, and then place eBay as the top search result. I've found it hilarious that every single search engine does the same thing. You can do it even in Apple's App Store too. (Not seeing the scam I'm talking about? Search a few more times, it'll hit) How does anyone see this as anything but a scam? User clicks the ad? Get paid. User clicks the search result? No pay. Either way, the user gets the same experience. But why the fuck should any company pay for an ad when the user explicitly searched for their product? It's metric hacking. I mean what's their next move? Down rank the explicit result? When making more money requires degrading the product you know we've fucked up
- manwe150 5mo ago
  Not sure this is better, but if they don’t pay, most of the first page will instead point to random unrelated competitors and the search result will become visually harder to find. It is basically legalized mafia tactics (“you’ve got a nice business, shame if something were to happen to it if you don’t pay up”) since supposedly you could pay someone else to SEO the site and achieve the same result without just buying ads
  - godelski 5mo ago
    You're exactly right that this is mafia tactics. Clearly people are buying into it to It would be a shame if someone else got the top result >> When making more money requires degrading the product you know we've fucked up
- BetterThanSober 5mo ago
  It’s basically a guaranteed way to get your term into the first rank. When people run a simple keyword search without intending to visit the site itself, for example when eBay is caught in a scandal and you’re curious, you type “eBay” expecting a news link somewhere on the first page. That and mafia-esque protection money basically
  - 1718627440 5mo ago
    A lot of big tech behaviour, is very much like mafia behaviour. I always use that description, when people asks me what cloudflare does or how the spam network works. They sell both the problem and the solution and the most unfilterable spam always comes from those aggressively filtering legitimate stuff out (Gmail, Outlook).
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
- monkpit 5mo ago
  This is not done by the search engine - eBay purposely bids to be the top ad for the search term “eBay”. It’s called cannibalization. They’re more willing to pay for the impression and potential click through than they are willing to give up the ad space to a competitor.
samsari 5mo ago
> ads in search Right, but you know what's even more effective than ads in search? Biased (towards paying customers) information in LLM output.

48terry 5mo ago

> It’s so ubiquitous people don’t even think about it or notice it anymore. Which is kind of the scary hazard for Google. They made people notice search by their announcements. They drew attention to the thing people took for granted as just how things work. People suddenly have a reason to look critically at it. Google has to hope to god the attention they receive back is actually positive.

godelski 5mo ago

> but Search is still the consumer facing product that brings people to Google and keeps them there. And let's not forget, these are the same people that when searching for "eBay" will put an ad at the top of the results, linking to eBay, and then place eBay as the top search result. I've found it hilarious that every single search engine does the same thing. You can do it even in Apple's App Store too. (Not seeing the scam I'm talking about? Search a few more times, it'll hit) How does anyone see this as anything but a scam? User clicks the ad? Get paid. User clicks the search result? No pay. Either way, the user gets the same experience. But why the fuck should any company pay for an ad when the user explicitly searched for their product? It's metric hacking. I mean what's their next move? Down rank the explicit result? When making more money requires degrading the product you know we've fucked up

manwe150 5mo ago
Not sure this is better, but if they don’t pay, most of the first page will instead point to random unrelated competitors and the search result will become visually harder to find. It is basically legalized mafia tactics (“you’ve got a nice business, shame if something were to happen to it if you don’t pay up”) since supposedly you could pay someone else to SEO the site and achieve the same result without just buying ads
- godelski 5mo ago
  You're exactly right that this is mafia tactics. Clearly people are buying into it to It would be a shame if someone else got the top result >> When making more money requires degrading the product you know we've fucked up
BetterThanSober 5mo ago
It’s basically a guaranteed way to get your term into the first rank. When people run a simple keyword search without intending to visit the site itself, for example when eBay is caught in a scandal and you’re curious, you type “eBay” expecting a news link somewhere on the first page. That and mafia-esque protection money basically
- 1718627440 5mo ago
  A lot of big tech behaviour, is very much like mafia behaviour. I always use that description, when people asks me what cloudflare does or how the spam network works. They sell both the problem and the solution and the most unfilterable spam always comes from those aggressively filtering legitimate stuff out (Gmail, Outlook).
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
monkpit 5mo ago
This is not done by the search engine - eBay purposely bids to be the top ad for the search term “eBay”. It’s called cannibalization. They’re more willing to pay for the impression and potential click through than they are willing to give up the ad space to a competitor.

samsari 5mo ago

> ads in search Right, but you know what's even more effective than ads in search? Biased (towards paying customers) information in LLM output.