cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/22055566
Google ad on a magazine from 1999
this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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internet funeral
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I was in university then and we actually used Yahoo mostly to learn about how to search (back then with boolean operators and other things). I don't recall covering google. I think maybe we had Alta-Vista as well? Of course, Archie, Veronica, etc. were still taught as well.
Oh the irony
All these companies start off with altruistic intentions and then become evil. Money and power is helluva drug.
yeah sorta funny how google took over partly because yahoo was so fully of ads and crap.
Alternate reality
Time to re-integrate portal litter into our vocabularies
I just Googled portal litter. Yeesh.
Done.
If they had ads for themselves, I assume they had income. But they say that their platform doesn't have ads. Where did they get the money to pay their own ads?
That doesn't look like an ad, but a section in a (probably) tech magazine where they introduce useful or interesting websites to their readers.
Same way Uber lost money for 7 years straight. Investors.
Every source on the history of Google seems to implicate that their growth and development went:
Using their university resources -> surviving off of investor money -> starting monetization with targeted ads and raking in money
So it seems they had a phase of cornering their market with both public resources and off risky investments, then capitalised on having that exclusive appeal. Seems all too familiar, considering every damn tech startup under the sun now seems to go "trick investors or public funds" -> "corner market" -> "enshittifcation"
If someone else has some better info - go ahead and correct me, but there seems to be no mention of monetisation of Google before their targeted ad rollout.
i love your post
I love YOUR post!
I saw a post that said the same thing about duckduckgo a couple of days ago
Oh how the dystopian tables have turned
It's a trap!
I wonder if this is the actual philosophy Google had at the time or if they always planned to be what they are now.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of Steve Wozniak / Steve Jobs split personality thing going on. Maybe one or the other person involved were serious about the "don't be evil" thing. But the others were not.
There will always be a difference between the two-things-in-a-basement mentality and the oh-god-won't-somebody-think-of-the-shareholders mentality.
Don't be evil, you know.
Ahh yes the "Do no evil" era.
yea, its funny to see xkcd.com/792 from 2010, back when google wasn't evil
You.....a mind traveler.
Me......in search of my own mind.
This plays out one of two ways. Either an adult swim animated show where your whole body is just my brain, and I stuff you back in my head through my ear.
The show revolves around you, trying to escape from inside my head. And me, trying to find you, and stuff you back inside.
ORRRRRRRRR
It's one of those lifetime romance movies. I'm Andre the Giant, and you're Bobby the Brain Heenan. They're lovers who have hit a rough patch, and the only way their marrage can survive the 1980s, is to take the WWF championship off of Hulk Hogan at Wrestlemania 3. They laugh, they live, they love, and then they cry when Hogan slams Andre.
..................what am I even doing with my life???
As it turns out, making boatloads of money despite already doing that was the plan.
As someone said, the goal of capitalism isn't to have a lot of money, it is to have all of the money.
I would like to have been a fly on the wall at the meeting when they decided "OK now we're evil, right?"
are we the baddies?
How the mighty have fallen
Notice that era was before they went public. Then it predictably became the "how do we make a profit this quarter?" era.
That's not a Google issue. That's literally each and every public traded corporation. They need to maximize shareholders profits by definition.
Could we stop stock markets and that? I'd love it.
I don't believe anyone decided to step in deeper shit one step at a time, they listed, and from there onwards it's the only possible path. Death by a thousand greedy strokes.
It's a Google issue because the executives... specifically chose to chase higher profits on the stock exchange. There's plenty of private companies that make money, yet retain their soul and aren't at the quarterly whim of outside investors...
What magazine?
Playboy?
I'm gonna believe it was Hustler, Larry Flynt was a big supporter of internet freedom.
If only they had stuck with that
But then, how would they make all the money?
They could still track your searches, and still use that data to put targeted ads on other people’s sites.
Which they still do, but it wasn't enough money to satiate the greed.
They definitely abandoned the "do one thing well" philosophy.
No they just changed the focus of that to making money.
And the "don't be evil" philosophy