I can remember a time that after a search, you’d just have a list of links. No extra boxes on the side or even an images tab, just the list of links. At the bottom of the page was the word “Google” and there would be more O’s, as they were links to other pages of results.
If there were sponsored links, it didn’t say so and you’d end up with different sites at the top of the list. So I don’t think way back there were.
It was running on venture capital, betting that giving away search for free would drive Yahoo, WebCrawler, Alta Vista, and all the others out of business, leaving Google free to monopolize and enshittify.
Luckily, it’s illegal to sell products below what they cost in the United States, so that didn’t happen.
Edit: Shit. I keep forgetting when I’m posting in this timeline. We got “Cats” the CGI musical in this one, too, right?! Did we at least get the butthole version here?
even at this time there were ads and sponsored links no?
I can remember a time that after a search, you’d just have a list of links. No extra boxes on the side or even an images tab, just the list of links. At the bottom of the page was the word “Google” and there would be more O’s, as they were links to other pages of results.
If there were sponsored links, it didn’t say so and you’d end up with different sites at the top of the list. So I don’t think way back there were.
Google brought AdSense years after that. At the time it wasn’t monetized.
No
No. This is literally 25 years ago before it was monetized.
It was running on venture capital, betting that giving away search for free would drive Yahoo, WebCrawler, Alta Vista, and all the others out of business, leaving Google free to monopolize and enshittify.
Luckily, it’s illegal to sell products below what they cost in the United States,
so that didn’t happen.Edit: Shit. I keep forgetting when I’m posting in this timeline. We got “Cats” the CGI musical in this one, too, right?! Did we at least get the butthole version here?