Google is Not a Search Engine

Friday, July 17th, 2009

It’s an advertising machine.

Where does Google get 97% of its revenue from?

Ok, I know I said I hate piecharts. But they only really work when the data is dramatic like this.

[via The Industry Standard]

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  • Jacques DeMolay

    An entity’s revenue stream doesn’t necessarily define what it “is”. You might as well say a TV network is not a TV Network, since their revenue comes almost entirely from advertising. By this measure, a government is a “taxation machine”. (thought I basically agree, in addition to being a freedom-preserving or freedom-limiting machine.

  • http://www.jonathanmacdonald.com jMac

    erm….if it wasn’t a search engine, it wouldn’t have the advertising revenues so….er….

  • http://justinbrock.com/ Justin Brock

    A ton of their ad revenue comes from non-search ads – it’s from display/text ads on other websites in their content network.

  • http://furisevil.org Duke

    I agree that Google is now more of an advertising machine than a search engine. While it certainly is a little of both, clearly it’s billions in revenue are not necessarily a result of its search engine prowess, but it’s ability to become a leading brand in online advertising.

    It’s products are good. I use Google search and gmail all the time.

    But, as an advertising machine, I believe that Google has become a crappy advertising machine. More importantly, I believe it has become completely Amoral Advertising Machine.

    If the word “fur” appears in a post, Google serves fur ads, even if the post is clearly anti-fur.

    If “puppy juice” were a product (it’s not), Google would surely serve ads for it on any post that mentioned puppies. I don’t make this claim lightly:

    See http://furisevil.org to see puppy skin for sale by Google’s clients.

    Google has little regard for the political or humanistic leanings of the readers of any given site, and seems to have no interest in improving accuracy.

    Case in point, the HuffPo blog of the Chief Operating Officer of the Humane Society of the United States features Google ads for fur.

    http://furisevil.org/?p=1140

  • Alex Zuzin

    Nice chart! :)

    To all who commented that the perspective here is skewed – the source of revenue does in many ways define what something “is”, despite public or private statements to the contrary. The government is indeed a taxation machine, and more – it’s squeezed between vox populi and special interests precisely because of the way it gets funded.

    Ditto for Google – systems never function in a way that seriously undermines their sustenance. Faced with a hypothetical choice between result quality and advertising revenue, it will only bend that far against its own good.

  • David Oglebee

    No. It’s the worlds biggest advertising agency.

  • BowleggedEmu

    Oops. I used Google to search for your site!

  • http://www.docster.info Docster

    I agree with Justin Brock.

  • http://yuraconst.ya.ru Rob-omb

    haha, google began as a search engine, now it is a sucking hivemind of advertisers. If Wesnoth contained Google ads (not only search), japanese Master of Monsters ads would pop out (as Wesnoth mentions original Master of Monsters for SMD as inspiration). So, yes, Google is a sick hivemind of advertisers. :(

  • Joey2U

    what i mean when I say that ‘Google is no longer a search engine’ is that the results you get if you search for anything the least bit alternative are so mobbed with commercial shit that you could spend all day looking for what you wanted and still never find it.
    Google really does control information and they just suck.

  • Joey2U

    also google has access to your email if you use gmail and access to all your searches if you use them. they would sniff your underwear if they thought they could get away with it. I’m waiting, but still haven’t see a good alternative search engine – probably because it would cost so much to create one and be attacked electronically on all sides by the google cunts.

  • Joey2U

    Like Microsoft delayed civilization with their donkey shit operating systems, so google delays the free sharing of information with their donkey shit search engine and advertising. Google ruined the net.

  • Joey2U

    coming soon to a community to you; google underwear sniffing trucks. Oops! sorry they already have those. google the info sniffer and facebook the spied on community for dumbshits. Bummer. Maybe people need ‘rules’ to control them on the net and everywhere else they go. But I doubt it.

  • Joey2U

    Bucks, fucks, clucks, sucks. Internet had great promise 20 years ago but it is now; as someone sort of said above, just one big money machine. Alternative media infiltrated to overflowing with msm quacklings and other nutjobs promoted by the msm to denigrate real resistance (to fake democracy and the control of bankers and other huge corps of your private life and right to a decent education and standard of living) Now it is the internet. You can’t live without it and your can’t live with it.

  • Joey2U

    Thank you informationis beautiful for letting me blow off a little steam here without checking my blood type and sampling my DNA.