[pmelendez]

Maybe it's just personal but when I respond a question in SO I feel I am giving back to the community... This feels more like giving it to Google.

Google already monetize their service by making me see ads(which is fair). SO monetize their service by showing me employment opportunities (which to me is better). Google model doesn't need the community to work... The entire SO model is a paying forward knowledge transfer.

So... At least to they it is not the same thing.

[wodenokoto]

But it is not different. They both show ads, and neither would make any money unless the ads had benefit to a significant amount of users.

The only thing SO has done different is better branding towards top contributors, and judging from your post they've done it by targeting ads towards the top contributors.

[cowsandmilk]

> But it is not different.

Except it is. Most people aren't contributing answers on SO about how to use SO. They are contributing answers about how to use JS or C or PHP or how to solve a particular programming problem. SO did not create JS or C or PHP or any other programming language or framework discussed on SO. Google's program is to get people to support products Google created so that Google doesn't have to support its products itself.