Google was founded in August 1998 and they they hired their first sales guy in May 1999. AdWords launched in October 2000 but before that time they had revenue from backend search deals where they powered other sites search engines for a fee, like Netscape which launched in June 1999.
So it's not really the case that Google had no revenue for years. They were able to generate revenue very fast by selling their tech to other companies.
Google AdSense was introduced in 2003 by Google, the famous search engine. Google AdSense is one of the simple and easy methods for bloggers, ad publishers and website owners to earn money. Google AdSense is a (PPC) pay per click advertising program in which the website owners have to display google advertisements on their websites. It means if someone visits the site and click on the advertisement then Google will pay to the website owner. It is the easiest way for website owners to get good amount of money
Ads were the work of engineers who thought that they'd work better than corporate search that Google first started to monetize. So were Adsense, the ad auction mechanics and the Dutch auction for the IPO.
Google AdSense was introduced in 2003 by Google, the famous search engine. Google AdSense is one of the simple and easy methods for bloggers, ad publishers and website owners to earn money. Google AdSense is a (PPC) pay per click advertising program in which the website owners have to display google advertisements on their websites.
One of my projects at Google was the [google in 1998] Easter egg, which actually shows a SRP from early 1999. I got the mockup because Jeff Dean happened to have some old mockups of what Ads might look like lying around on his computer. They hadn't launched at the time.
Before that, Google's revenue was largely partnerships and one-off deals. They'd offer to provide search for some large Internet property in exchange for a large lump sum, the way most business was done at the time. The auction came later - IIRC it was invented in 2000, and its inventors got one of the first Founders Awards.
The way I heard it, upper management was aware of GoTo.com and it was a major factor in the pivot into the CPC auction business model, but GoTo.com was hardly a household name. I'd never heard of them until I joined Google (many years later) and started looking into the history of my employer, and their business model was white-labeled advertising for the other major search engines & portals (Yahoo, Altavista, etc.)
This is a rosy way to look at things after-the-fact, but, as far as I understand, the way Google monetized their search (by showing only relevant ads) was still a fairly new business practice at the time. And Adsense wasn't well tested either. Both were bets that ended up transforming the entire online Ad industry...
Are you sure about Adsense? Talked to ad pros recently and they all complained Adsense is ancient (still mySQL?) and often broken; doesn't look like Google emphasizes it despite being their cash cow, more like deep state of neglect.
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