
Google Will Eat Itself (2005) - viraptor
https://www.gwei.org/index.php
======
pritambarhate
As per Wikipedia[1]: >> Page and Brin remain co-founders, employees, board
members, and controlling shareholders of Alphabet Inc.

Forbes article referenced by Wikipedia:[2] >> At Alphabet’s annual meeting in
June, multiple shareholders criticized the fact that Page did not show up
given that he and Brin have more than 50% of the company’s voting power,
thanks to Alphabet’s multi-class stock structure. That structure will not
change despite the management shift, the company said.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc).

[2]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jilliandonfro/2019/12/03/larry-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jilliandonfro/2019/12/03/larry-
page-steps-down-as-ceo-of-google-parent-alphabet/#475ec9733aa3)

~~~
echelon
Is lack of attendance something that happens regularly?

Can control ever be wrested from majority voting power owners? Page and Brin,
Zuckerberg, et al.?

~~~
mamon
Page and Brin are not married to each other, as far as I know (which would
make the shares their common property). You can always try to drive a wedge
between them, have one of them turn on the other. With Zuckerberg, no, no
chance.

~~~
sukilot
They are both basically retired so there's not much to wedge about.

------
ChuckMcM
Interesting, the page info is out of date (if it was ever a real thing) from
their "how much do we own"

    
    
       How much do "we" own Google
    
       Google Shares owned by GWEI: 819
       Amount of USD: 405.413,19
       Adsense-Clicks: 1.556.361
       Adsense-Page Impressions: 37.538
       Adsense-CTR: 2,41%
    
       Google Ownership Counter
         202.345.117 Years until GWEI fully owns Google.
    
       Google Share Price*
         Current Google Share Price : 495.01 USD
         Symbol: "GOOG"
    

Current price is over $1,400 so either they have over a million dollars of
Google stock or this experiment has stopped?

There is an interesting question here of how much money is someone willing to
let "sit there" which is growing slowly vs taking it and doing something with
it.

~~~
sjtindell
This question comes up a lot when people find Bitcoin wallets that haven’t
been touched in nearly a decade and have millions of dollars worth of the
token associated to them. Is someone just being incredibly patient?

~~~
corylulu
Or lost their wallet/password

~~~
sli
I lost a Bitcoin wallet with ~50BTC back when it was priced at pennies. I was
so young then. Oh well.

------
theandrewbailey
Google cache version of Google Will Eat Itself:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gwei.org%2Findex.php)

How far will the recursion go?

------
whack
Unpopular opinion but this sounds like a half baked idea that will never
amount to anything. Imagine some other equally silly parallels:

 _We generate money by selling iOS apps on a network of hidden developers.
With this money we automatically buy Apple shares. We buy Apple via their own
app store! Apple eats itself - but in the end "we" own it!_

 _We generate money by selling goods on Amazon on a network of hidden
affiliates. With our profits we automatically buy Amazon shares. We buy Amazon
via their own marketplace! Amazon eats itself - but in the end "we" own it!_

If your goal is to takeover a public company, just start a GoFundMe and let
people donate money to you using any source they want. That is a far better
way of achieving your goal, as compared to accepting "donations" only via
AdSense. Though I suppose that is far less "hip", so it'll never catch on.

~~~
appleflaxen
I read the OP as a tongue in cheek thought experiment (or satire), rather than
a sincere effort to subvert, cripple and destroy a multibillion dollar company
by running advertisements inside their platform.

As a result, I suspect that a "half-baked idea that will never amount to
anything" was the author's intenion, and that your opinion probably is no more
unpopular than those who doubt the chicken _really_ wanted to get to the other
side.

~~~
whack
Based on everything I've read, it isn't an idle thought experiment at all. The
artists are genuinely trying to take down Google. Check out the press links:

[https://www.theregister.com/2008/08/13/google_will_eat_itsel...](https://www.theregister.com/2008/08/13/google_will_eat_itself/)

Reading more, it actually gets even worse. Apparently the artists were using a
bunch of click bots to inflate their ad revenue, and they were boasting about
gaming Google's anti-fraud systems to do so.

~~~
sukilot
This reminds of the Spotify thread where posters were desperately failing to
comprehend what it means for a musician to be an artist.

~~~
whack
I'm not familiar with that thread. Care to elaborate?

------
aagd
The artists behind this: →
[https://www.ubermorgen.com/](https://www.ubermorgen.com/)

Their website doesn't seem to load well so WP: →
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubermorgen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubermorgen)

They also caused quite a stir with a satirical website called Vote Auction
where people could sell their votes to the highest bidder. →
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voteauction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voteauction)

~~~
eindiran
> Deephorizon - Deepwater Horizon, Oil-painting on Ocean Canvas, 2008

That's the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. The "paintings" in the
series are just the number of liters dumped in the spill:

> 34_MILLION_LITERS

[https://www.ubermorgen.com/deeeeeeephorizon.com/](https://www.ubermorgen.com/deeeeeeephorizon.com/)

------
tempodox
Is this from 2005? Earlier discussion with an identical title / URL on HN
(2019):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19784400](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19784400)

~~~
dang
Also 2011:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2628328](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2628328)

2008:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=273337](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=273337)

------
viraptor
HN hug of death :-(

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200720232040/https://www.gwei....](https://web.archive.org/web/20200720232040/https://www.gwei.org/index.php)

~~~
amaajemyfren
Yep.

Does anyone remember when this was called the Slashdot effect? Being
Slashdotted.

~~~
rietta
I sure do. As a small web hosting provider AtlantaWebHost.com it was one of
our proudest moments when our FreeBSD servers handled the Slackdot effect
without complaint. This was the Pentium 3 Dell PowerEdge server era.

I am no longer affiliated with AtlantaWebHost.com. The company was bought in
2005 and is still running as a boutique provider.

To this day, I'm still pretty handy with crimping ethernet cables :-) I mostly
just do it in my own home and homes of friends if asked for help.

~~~
ableal
> the Slackdot effect

Supposing this was a typo, I'll trade you for one "rear window defrogger" and
half a "string loaded door".

~~~
rietta
Hahaha! You caught me. Didn't even notice that slip :-)

------
simonebrunozzi
> 202.345.117 Years until GWEI fully owns Google.

Clearly a European, because of the use of "." instead of "," for thousand
separators.

It almost looked like an IPv4 address.

Well, neat idea. Only ~200M years to go. Good luck!

~~~
Lammy
And because of the name :p

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_Will_Eat_Itself](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_Will_Eat_Itself)

------
kome
GWEI is one of the smartest web.art project i remember.

HN is in love with the old web lately!

And I understand, the "new" web is just a boring, commercial and "colorfully"
grey. Also, too much JS.

~~~
bjstrevy
I've actually been working on a browser extension this year that is directly
inspired by the older web (early 00's for me) where you can chat with the
other people on the same domain or page as you called Sidewalk.Chat

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewalkchat/denbp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewalkchat/denbpdkchnadclbjgpdgaclebnghkfna)

People seem to want to return to that sort of more innocent time since we just
crossed 1K users.

------
vajrabum
I love this bit:

Google Ownership Counter 202.345.117 Years until GWEI fully owns Google.

------
Animats
I'm surprised that someone hasn't set up some kind of autonomous Etherium
blockchain controlled organization that buys miners to mine more Etherium to
buy more miners...

------
bencollier49
A version of this that might actually work would involve investing dividends
in additional ad serving properties.

------
HenryKissinger
> We generate money by serving Google text advertisments on a network of
> hidden Websites. With this money we automatically buy Google shares. We buy
> Google via their own advertisment! Google eats itself - but in the end "we"
> own it!

I thought websites _paid_ Google to have their ads on their ads network. Isn't
that how Google makes the bulk of its revenue?

~~~
m12k
Advertisers pay Google, which then pays publishers (people who own websites)
to have the ads displayed on their sites. This display ad network was largely
established when Google bought DoubleClick, and should not be confused with
Google's search ads (where ads are displayed in Google's own search results).

~~~
culopatin
But don't you need certain volume of visits for Google to want to display
their ads in your site? What stops me from creating 300 random sites and
putting google ads in them and just let them sit?

~~~
dhosek
No minimum traffic, but they have a minimum payment threshold of $100. I have
some legacy adsense ads, mostly on an old abandoned blog, which last sent me a
payment three years ago. My current balance is $14.82. One of these days, I'll
get around to doing what's necessary to resume serving the ads on a wiki I run
which used to generate around $5–10 a month, but I'm in no rush.

------
MediaMonitorWD
This shit is not working, and I guess it never did.

------
sam1r
Anyone else click subscribe?

------
ecmascript
Very confusing numbers:

> Amount of USD: 405.413,19

Is that ~$405 or ~$405413?

What about the hosting costs?

~~~
viraptor
It's $405413. Using Spanish formatting I believe. (comma as a decimal point
and the dot for thousands)

~~~
rtkwe
A lot of the world uses comma separators actually including basically all of
Europe minus a few. The whole wikipedia article is kind of neat; never figured
California would have a weird system for a while where decimal parts on signs
were expressed as super scripts (eg 3^7 meant 3.7).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#/media/File:...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#/media/File:DecimalSeparator.svg)

~~~
tesseract
Superscript decimals are pretty common in the US for handwritten money amounts
(like on checks or price tags) but outside that context it does seem weird!

~~~
DavidSJ
Some examples of this on price tags:

[https://4.imimg.com/data4/VV/RV/MY-3648905/price-
tag-250x250...](https://4.imimg.com/data4/VV/RV/MY-3648905/price-
tag-250x250.jpg)

[https://www.coloraccounting.com/uploads/2/4/8/0/24801950/pub...](https://www.coloraccounting.com/uploads/2/4/8/0/24801950/published/p1_60.jpg?1527788559)

[https://encrypted-
tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQu8D...](https://encrypted-
tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQu8Dmw4hD8Az6VSydG1sq4Sr6ra_kHyuoFkw&usqp=CAU)

On gas stations, the superscript is indicating tenths of a penny, rather than
pennies.

That latter practice is not exclusive to the US. This sign is from Germany or
Austria I believe (LKW is German):

[https://c8.alamy.com/comp/D3XKHG/price-board-a-gas-
station-w...](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/D3XKHG/price-board-a-gas-station-with-
high-gas-petrol-prices-D3XKHG.jpg)

