Advertising is their revenue model. Dogmatically, Google is a search company. The comparison would be like calling Microsoft an Office Suite company. Sure, that's where a load of their revenue comes from, but it's not what the company is about. Google's positing as an advertising company is a consequence of them being a search company -- just like NBC's position as an advertising company is a result of them being a media company.
"Google is an Artificial Intelligence company. They just don't advertise the fact."
Source?
Re:What Scares Google
by joe_the_user on Wednesday August 26, 2009 @01:19PM
(#787603)
It's like porn! You might not be able to define intelligence but you know it when you see it.
Noam Chomsky points out we know English automatically, not through having been taught rules.
Similarly, I don't know have any references and artificial intelligence nor do I know exactly how does their search system works (well, I know page rank but I know they've done lots of work beyond it). But I can tell they're semi-intelligent by experiencing the semi-intelligence of their searching system. So they are an artificial intelligence company whether they say it or not, whether they know it or not, simply by the fact that what they create operates semi-intelligently to me.
They're an advertising company, which happens to own a search engine.
(30% of their revenues come from advertising on sites not owned by Google. By way of comparison, that is ten times what Google makes from every revenue source other than advertising. See their 2008 Annual Report if you don't trust my math.)