Last time I checked, Google had annual revenues of about $20B.
Microsoft has annual revenues of about $60B.
Google knows everything about me – and they’ve shown a few times that they’re not afraid to use it. (Ask Chris Campbell about the time Google emailed us when we were working on Netscape 8.)
Microsoft knows very little about me.
As a developer of software, I respect and emulate their business model – they write software, and then they sell it to people. It’s old-fashioned, but it works. And it’s straightforward.
And Google? Google, who makes a living by pimping out a spot in my attention span; Google, who has the moral backbone of a Tadpole – is considered to be the good guy.
Why?
I’m a geek. If you’re reading my blog, you’re probably a geek as well. And one of the defining characteristics of geeks, is that we like to think we’re different from “ordinary” people. One of the places we’re the MOST likely to feel special, is in our belief that advertising doesn’t affect us.
In the strange and emerging economies of ‘freemium‘ business models, commercial open source software, and crowdsourced marketplaces – in a world so backwards we’re giving money away to the producers of the most inefficient vehicles on the planet, while far away our siblings, children and cousins are dying for the oil needed to run those vehicles – well, any company that makes a fortune off of the weaknesses of the gullible Average Joe, is okay in our book. Our digital ‘Robin Hood’ to the Sheriff of Rampant Consumerism.
Except that it’s folly.
Geeks are no more immune to advertising than anyone else. Less, really. Ever heard of Gizmodo? Engadget? Apple Computer?
The long term, nearly-recession-proof success of advertising-based business models simply serves to confirm a simple truth – one that helps to explain (should you wonder) how we’ve ended up in this mess:
People are sheep.
Even geeks.
PS – Please buy something from Amazon for Valentines Days
#1 by Doug Ransom on 14Feb09 - 7:53 am
“in a world so backwards we’re giving money away to the producers of the most inefficient vehicles on the planet”
could read
“in a world so backwards we’re giving money away to the most inefficient producers of vehicles on the planet … “
#2 by admin on 14Feb09 - 9:35 pm
Doug – Both are true, I think. But there’s a difference between social efficiency and business efficiency. Government handouts and deferred taxes are efficient for business, but socially inefficient.
Why not simply give the same money to the CONSUMERS – as an incentive to buy the cars that Ford and GM now promise to make fuel-efficient?
#3 by Robert Wooller on 19Jul10 - 2:12 pm
Google is obviously just as bad as Microsoft, and I think after Sergey Brin and Larry Page get a payout of nearly $40bn, the greed at Google is obscene. So the argument is over about Google. In the future we will only get everything from one source Walmart Google, inc.
#4 by Robert Wooller on 19Jul10 - 2:22 pm
The greed at Google is obscene. Originally created as an academic tool in 1996/7 Google has totally sold out to greed, Larry Page and Sergey Brin are totally greedy. I think a $40bn payout is obscene. I mean is there any need for that much money? In the future there will only be one provider Wal-Mart Google.