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0 points9dev9mo ago0 comments

Google has this pesky problem of carrying almost all their eggs in one basket: The moment their ad business doesn’t work anymore, the behemoth that Google is will come down to its knees. But due to the way the company is structured, they need search to drive users to the ads, and it’s all one big mess of entangled revenue streams that can’t be touched for fear of breaking something.

Now if AI turns out to be the next big thing, they can steer differently next time, sell subscriptions, and avoid all that entanglement with multi-sided markets and layered revenue strategies. At least that’s my take.

0 comments

autoexec9mo ago

> they need search to drive users to the ads

Why? The websites we visit can still be infested with google's ads, and so can our gmail accounts, and so can the youtube videos we watch, and they can push ads directly onto our cell phones 24/7. Google has plenty of ways to force ads into your life.

Google used to need search in order to build extensive dossiers on everyone. It told them what people were looking for online. What they were interested in. Now Google has their cell phones, their browser, and their DNS servers doing that for them. Most people are handing all of their browsing history to Google. Google doesn't need search, which is why it's been allowed to atrophy into uselessness.

h2zizzle9mo ago

>The moment their ad business doesn’t work anymore, the behemoth that Google is will come down to its knees.

Which makes it all the weirder that they seem to be intentionally sabotaging it by nerfing Search into unusability.

Marazan9mo ago

The slow destruction of Google search is and will continue to be revenue positive for Google right up until the point where it isn't.

Eventually they will break the "trust thermocline" in their search results and that will blow it up but on the way they'll keep making more and more money from every damaging change they make.

woooooo9mo ago

Crucially, the people driving each incremental change get to celebrate the extra revenue they drove and get promoted for it.

fragmede9mo ago

This was true, and is why Google didn't come out with ChatGPT themselves 5 years earlier. But since OpenAI's come to take their lunch, they understand this predicament and are pivoting.

9devOP9mo ago

Until that pivot isn't even close to complete, this continues to be true. Take ads away now, and Google ceases to exist tomorrow. It's going to take a long time until that fundamentally changes.

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