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by ethnomusicolog 4271 days ago
What you are saying is exactly the point of Peter Thiel. Basically he is saying that Google is a search company, with a monopoly in search, and they try to pass as a an advertising company (the Ericschmidt quote). According to Peter thiel that is SOP for companies that have a monopoly in a market. they do this for many reasons, including evading regulatory oversight. So it seems to me you are agreeing with him.
3 comments
pi-err 4271 days ago
I see Google as an automation company based on data and monetized by advertising.

Does it make Google an advertising company? Yes by the bottom line, no by this strategy. It just happens it's the best way to monetize what they have so far.

Analogy: would you define 1905 Einstein as a patent clerk or a scientist?

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netcan 4271 days ago
It's just hard to boil down the dynamic to a statement like that, Google is an X company. Google invented a search engine where everyone found stuff on the web easier than other methods. They then built an advertising platform that complimented it. The two are highly interlinked. They invented and got good at both.

You can look at things from a distant POV with too few details just like you can look at it from a perspective that's too close, to many details. There is no method apart from using your faculties that can replace having good faculties and the ability to apply perspective.

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JetSpiegel 4271 days ago
If by "complemented it" you mean ruined it and moots the point of PageRank, sure.
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netcan 4271 days ago
No. That's not what I meant.
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EGreg 4271 days ago
Google is an "X" company, solve for "X"

Ok lets see it's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Therefore Google is an information organization company. More than search, it's also monetizing the effort of getting all the information into proprietary databases and keeping them up to date.

Google Maps, Google Places, Google Search, etc.

Then they monetize it by advertising, as well as running their own commerce - app stores and the like. And they also give businesses Analytics, Email, Docs and other Apps that they have now unified with Google+ as well as Google Checkout for payment processing.

Now Apple, Google and Amazon compete in phone OSes, payment processing platforms etc.

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