

"But how will Google ever make money? There's the rub." - jasonlbaptiste
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/dec2000/nf2000127_947.htm

======
tdoggette
Now, of course, when there's a web site that is good but un-monetized, the
answer to that question is "Google ads."

------
dsil
Nobody has mentioned it yet, but this seems most relevant now considering how
much people make the same claims about lack of business models (and refusal to
use the most obvious ones) for Twitter and Facebook.

Sacrificing short-term revenue for long-term gain worked great for Google. Its
unlikely, but seems possible that either twitter or facebook could be the next
to come up with a new and improved way to convert activity -> money.

We'll see in a few years who is/isn't eating their words about those companies
not focusing on revue soon enough.

------
ambition
I'm impressed that they had 100 people including 30 PhDs at year 2.

~~~
MaysonL
That was just the research staff. :<)

------
Rayzar
Wow, this is a great find. I bet whoever wrote it painfully had to swallow his
words as the years passed and Google became what it is today. It just shows
that with the right strategy and ideas, any startup can unsettled an
established field and come out tops.

~~~
jsrn

        > I bet whoever wrote it painfully had to swallow his words...
                                                          ^^^
    

_her_ words, that is [it's by Kalpana Mohan] <http://www.kalpanamohan.org/>

and she doesn't seem to be particularly ashamed of her words: the article is
listed in her list of writing samples:
<http://www.kalpanamohan.org/writing_samples.shtml>

~~~
sachinag
Wait, even Google was admitting that they were sacrificing short-term revenue
for long-term gain. Why should she have to eat her words?

It's very clear that the founders had to be talked into advertising only after
the search appliance failed. (I'm almost positive only RedHat actually
purchased one of the damn things, which makes sense since PageRank/BackRub
isn't going to help you find Word documents in an intranet.)

~~~
krakensden
They had text-based ads back then, they even mention it in the article.

The critique the author was leveling was that they were resisting /banner/
ads, and therefore putting their scruples ahead of good sense. Definitely
seems silly in hindsight.

------
frisco

      > That potent duo has collectively bet $25 million on the still-private company.
    

Back when 2-year-olds with $25M raised could reasonably be guessed to be
public. Different times...

------
vinutheraj
_Before launching a freelance writing career in January 2000, Kalpana was a
software developer at IBM for ten years. She has a B.A. in English from the
University of Chennai (India), a Diplome Superieur in French from the Alliance
Francaise and an M. S. in Computer Science from San Jose State University._

I found this on her homepage, kinda interesting that she developed software at
IBM for 10 years before she found her calling in writing.

------
jimbokun
After noting the date on the article (actually, the quote pulled for the title
pretty much gives it away), I was expecting to laugh a bit at the fools who
didn't foresee how profitable Google would become.

Except, reading the article the concerns still make a lot of sense. It's still
shocking that little text ads next to searches are worth billions of dollars,
if you momentarily set aside the fact that you happen to live in a world where
it's true.

For those of you old enough to remember that long ago time, did any of you
honestly imagine Google becoming anywhere near as successful as it has become?

~~~
jgilliam
I was working as a developer at Lycos at the time (1998-1999), and we were
constantly being pressured by sales to put bigger banner ads all over the
place.

We set up one of the first (maybe the first? i don't know) web usability labs
with eye-tracking, and we saw how no one paid any attention to the big
graphics. They focused like a laser on the most boring part of the page, the
text, because they knew that was the stuff we weren't trying to trick them
into looking at.

It was totally counter-intuitive, so we screamed from the mountaintop that we
couldn't keep putting bigger ads everywhere, they were totally useless. But
sales drove the company, and that's what the advertisers, our "customers"
wanted.

So Google destroyed Lycos, because they listened to their engineers and not
their sales people.

------
josefresco
"But Brin says he isn't worried: "When somebody searches for 'cancer,' should
you put up the site that paid you or the site that has better information?"
Brin is betting better information will win the day. "

Sad that the answer now is 'both', which to un-savvy Internet users sometimes
means the paid placement is the one they see first and think Google is serving
as the top ranking site.

~~~
schoudha
No, the answer is not both.

Google has organic results and ad results, they are clearly distinguished in
the UI and are generated by two distinct systems.

~~~
kragen
Whether the distinction in the UI is clear or not depends on how much
experience you have with it. For me and presumably you, who have been using
Google dozens of times a day for ten years, it's crystal-clear. For my
neighbors who go to the locutorio down the street to use the internet because
they don't have computers, it's not clear at all, according to some studies I
can't be bothered to dig up right now.

------
rjurney
I was pretty convinced this was the dumbest guy on earth, or a fellow
suffering from traumatic brain injury with a bad editor, until I checked the
date.

~~~
VBprogrammer
Yeah, I had the same experience. Strikes me that in the end, googles 'purity'
has paid off!

------
0xdefec8
hrm that post was a good BUI (browsing under the influence) test...it took me
about 3 paragraphs before I had to check the date on the article. time for bed
I think.

~~~
kailashbadu
I didn't have to go that down. The third sentence reads 'Two-year-old Google'.

------
lakeeffect
nice find.

~~~
josefresco
Who is voting comments like this up? Not offense lakeeffect but typically a
short comment like this that doesn't add to the discussion is either ignored
or voted down. What gives?

~~~
spkthed
It would seem that the slow creep of the Digg/Reddit effect is beginning to
surface. It may simply be me but the articles on here are beginning to lose
some of the technical/interesting nature and starting to turn into broader,
general interest pieces.

------
kubrick
ROFLcopter. Really funny to see punditry fail epically.

~~~
kubrick
I love how HN is full of reflexive down-voters. What, you're pundit fans?

