It’s an advertising machine.
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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It’s an advertising machine.
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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9 Comments
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.
erm….if it wasn’t a search engine, it wouldn’t have the advertising revenues so….er….
A ton of their ad revenue comes from non-search ads – it’s from display/text ads on other websites in their content network.
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
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.
No. It’s the worlds biggest advertising agency.
Oops. I used Google to search for your site!
I agree with Justin Brock.
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. :(
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