[tfsh]

I don't think you're wanting to converse in good faith, but on the off chance this is a question - yes, GCP was revenue losing for a number of years, but since Q1 2023 they've been profitable. It takes money to bootstrap anything - obviously - this is the case for the vast majority of companies and their offerings, especially so for one which requires vast amounts of compute resources, SREs, legal, etc.

[righthand]

So just to clarify the entire cloud org was funded by advertisers for most of it’s existence.

[jsnell]

No, it was funded by Google.

Advertisers paid money for Google for totally unrelated services. Google invested that money in a number of ways. One of them was to build this very profitable non-advertising business. The advertisers didn't fund that business any more than the advertisers funded US treasuries, or the dozens of startups that Google has invested in as a VC.

[azinman2]

What’s the problem? Google is trying to diversify their revenue streams. I don’t understand the relevance. Apple TV+ is paid for by iPhones. Ok? And?

[righthand]

> Ok? And?

This is a thread about using your money for better things than paying an ad company. The comment that started this argument you want to have pointed out that it’s self sustaining. But I pointed out that wasn’t always true. Tfsh backed my claim.

So today maybe there isn’t a problem to which your money isn’t being spent with the ad org but it was that way for a very long time to which we can grant the OP some grace as it’s a rather recent change.

There is even still an argument to be made that while you may not be giving money to the ad org you are still giving money to Google thereby helping them deflect the damage they cause the world in their other orgs.

[crazygringo]

No, even if you were Google Cloud paying customer #1, your money was going to Cloud. It wasn't supporting anything to do with ads.

The ads were providing income to Google which allowed Google to bootstrap Cloud until it was profitable on its own, not vice-versa.

When you buy (or bought) Cloud services, that doesn't affect Google's ad revenue or advertising behavior at all, not for the better and not for the worse. They're basically unrelated orgs within the corporation. Using Cloud isn't promoting ads or whatever you seem to think, not now and not previously.

[righthand]

But it’s not about killing Google’s ad revenue, it’s about hurting Google as a whole. It’s a complete monster, regardless how many heads the hydra has.

[crazygringo]

OK, well at least you're being honest now.

You could have saved us all a lot of time by simply stating upfront that you hate Google as a whole, rather than discussing the technicalities of which parts have to do with advertising or not.