[no_future]

Google confounds me. They are one of the largest tech companies as far as just pure reach, they own the top search engine, email service, and mobile operating system, as well as a host of other properties both hardware and software(and a huge pile of money that they're sitting on), yet still to this day make 99% of their revenue from assaulting people with ads on Youtube and in their search results. They attempted to get into hardware by buying Motorola, but later ended up selling it to Lenovo at a loss. They have the capital and resources to expand into pretty much any field that they so desire(including taking another crack at hardware), so why do they put all their eggs in the advertising basket?

[yen223]

It's pretty telling that in the 20+ years that the Internet has gone mainstream, web companies still haven't found a business model that generates as much revenue as advertising - a lesson that old media learned a long time ago. It boils down to the problem that Internet users are conditioned to expect services for free, and advertising appears to be the only way to provide sustainable "free" services.