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Google is a great example of "it's difficult to get someone to understand something if their paycheck depends on not understanding it". Even before google was founded and the founders discussed how they could monetize their search, they understood that paid ads create a conflict of interest: the point of search which is to to return the most relevant results, but the incentive in paid ads is to return the best paying…
Google implemented a compromise - paid ads get displayed at the top, but they are marked as ads, so if you want the most relevant results, you scroll below the paid ads.
Anyone else remember how much better Google was at the beginning than anything else? I had always tried the latest search engines like Ask Jeeves, Altavista, Hotbot, Webcrawler, etc. Once Google came around they all looked like total crap, it was simply a revolution. The clean interface, the performance, the much better results, it was beautiful.
I'm curious if there's another company in history that became so pervasive so quickly? Not just in terms of size, but in impact/reach? I realise this question somewhat requires defining what Google is and it's current size and scale, which is quite the challenge. To me Google seems uniquely impactful, uniquely quickly, but I'd love to learn of other comparable companies from history.
To name a few (US centric ones) from guesses.... Ford, the British East India Company, Bethlehem Steel, Standard Oil, Bell, Apple, Boeing, and probably Amazon.
Google is a great example of "it's difficult to get someone to understand something if their paycheck depends on not understanding it". Even before google was founded and the founders discussed how they could monetize their search, they understood that paid ads create a conflict of interest: the point of search which is to to return the most relevant results, but the incentive in paid ads is to return the best paying…
Yes, there is a conflict, but it's not an unsolvable one. Google implemented a compromise - paid ads get displayed at the top, but they are marked as ads, so if you want the most relevant results, you scroll below the paid ads.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
well articulated. if any of you google employees reading this thread, if you love open and free web, get out of google. you're part of the problem.
So how do you have “free” without ads?
If the internet was invented in America's earlier days, a lot of these information tools would be a public service, similar to libraries, and we'd all be better for it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, there is a conflict, but it's not an unsolvable one. Google implemented a compromise - paid ads get displayed at the top, but they are marked as ads, so if you want the most relevant results, you scroll below the paid ads.
Paid ads used to be displayed to the side of the results. Being displayed instead of the results isn't so much of a "compromise".
You just need to scroll a bit. Google needs to tread the balance to stay usable, otherwise people stop using it.
Google is a great example of "it's difficult to get someone to understand something if their paycheck depends on not understanding it". Even before google was founded and the founders discussed how they could monetize their search, they understood that paid ads create a conflict of interest: the point of search which is to to return the most relevant results, but the incentive in paid ads is to return the best paying…
Vast majority of people are working on building some feature functionality or enhancing an underlying system infra for more scale or performance or such non-functional capability which they genuinely think will improve user experience and hence make users prefer to use their product more than anything else.
People didn't focus on business metrics (most people don't know what they are) – this was most disorienting for me. It took me sometime to understand the luxury provided by strong margin business that is google ads which allows you gloss over short-term inefficiencies while exploring new product spaces.
It is assumed monetization in the form of ads or subscription can be done if there is strong user engagement for the product and that revenue vs cost equation will work out. (If not, they kill it, which they do badly). Another culture at Google is people are openly critical of their product in very large internal discussion forums.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now think of ChatGPT with this framework. Because it is paid to do, it will slowly try to convince you to buy something or even worse think of some politician or party differently. Scary stuff!
The nice thing with ChatGPT is they've established a viable funding model through paid subscriptions from day 1. On the other hand I predict that we will see the next ten years as a 'golden age' of steadily improving performance from ChatGPT, which will then plateau and 'enshittify'.