Google’s business isn’t just advertising

In the beginning of this chapter, I emphasize
advertising as the revenue model that drives
Google’s growth as a business-services company.
My accent on advertising is not meant
to diminish Google’s great success in licensing
its basic search technology to Yahoo!, AOL,
Netscape, and many other high-profile Internet
portals. This licensing activity has generated
strong revenue flows for Google, matured the
company’s business standing, and extended its
brand to near-ubiquity. But most readers of this
book are interested less in licensing Google’s
search engine than in using AdWords and
AdSense as business tools.
It’s difficult to predict how far AdWords and
AdSense will take Google, and what their effect
on Internet culture will be. It’s not a stretch
to imagine that search advertising, using the
cost-per-click model that Google popularized,
could alter the Web landscape by reducing
advertisers’ reliance on flashing banners and
those heinous pop-ups.
Certainly, the business side of Google is revolutionizing
online marketing, changing it from an
art to a science, from guesswork to measurement,
from blind spending to targeted cost-perlead.