A Look On Google Part 3 of 4

Economic Success – A Googol of Revenues

Google started out as a search engine, with no visible way of making money. In fact, it was not after a couple of years as leader in the search industry that they
decided they needed a way of making money (without harming their interface’s simple style).

The internet’s traditional way of making money online (if you have a webpage) is through banners. But banners didn't work for Google, as they would destroy its elegant and simple style.

The answer came with a system called AdWords in the form of small, unobtrusive and highly relevant text advertisements alongside Google’s search results. These “sponsored links” are placed on the results page in an order determined by auction among the advertisers. Yet advertisers don’t have to pay unless a user clicks on one of the banners, therefore establishing a sort of “pay-per-click” model, that works for the advertiser (because someone who has clicked on the link does so because he is interested) as well as for Google (they get money every time someone clicks on a “sponsored link”).

On the other hand, users can easily ignore these “sponsored links” or can actually learn to love them. So, if PageRank was what made Google’s search engine the leader, then AdWords (with its carefully chosen ads) constitutes the economic success of Google.