What's Next for Google

kottke links to a great piece about Google's "secret" source of power (you mean, it's not those energy pellets from video games?) from Topix and writes a nice post about Google's future as well. This is particularly well-timed, since Gothamist was posed with the question, "How does Google make money?" this weekend. We managed to answer, "Text ads," but started to wonder what would come next for a company who has become a verb in a way Yahoo! could only dream of. We do think kottke is right, in that we may all be "cursing the Google monopoly" in a few years, but as long as we can dig dirt on our friends, enemies and ourselves by Googling, Gothamist is happy.

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By Jen Chung in Arts and Events on April 6, 2004 10:36 AM

Comments [rss]

Todd

They actually make most of their money selling their search services in the form of the Google Search Appliance and through deals with companies like AOL.

VCs are still throwing money at Google. Investing on what Google will do next, thats rare for a internet company.

Andy

The companies that buy advertising on Google DO seem to have some weight in what websites are ranked at the top under certain key words. They may not be able to buy their way to the top but they seem to have a say on what DOES show up as #1.

For example, under a certain key phrase on Google, this certain stupid website with no traffic at all (it is actually rated as a personal page) always show up #1. And it seems to be #1 because it is not a threat/competitor to the companies buying advertising for this phrase.

ziegfeld

The Onion just announced today that Yahoo has launched a soulsearching engine:

http://theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4014&n=1

KennyBitch

Yeah, I'm a cynic and just sort of assumed Google listed -some- query results based upon how much certain sites paid them, rather than content or the number of hits the site gets... It made sense, I guess from kind of a jaded Net perspective however ass-backwards as it may have been...

but I have been informed otherwise

Jen

When I said, "You're right," I thought KennyBitch meant what tien referred to - better positioning on the ad space part. And weren't there old ads on the old Google search results closer to the search box?

KennyBitch

kottke-

Thanks for clearing that up -I dig your site by the way- I figured at lease one search engine or another did that. And hasn't google added something like 10,000,000 more sites here, resently?

jkottke

I thought Google generated income primarily from "selling" companies better "positioning" on search query results. But I may be wrong.

They absolutely do not do this. They do sell sponsored ads that are related to the search keywords, but they are clearly differentiated from the search results. Other search companies do sell preferred placement in search results though.

tien

as far as i know, you don't get better positions on search results. i know you can in the ads on the left, but you can't buy your way to the top.