Early search engines monetized through licensing and paid ranking listings

Evidence

Google’s first revenues depended instead on exclusive licensing deals to provide web services to portals such as Yahoo! and Japan’s BIGLOBE. It also generated modest revenue from sponsored ads linked to search query keywords. There were other models for consideration. Rival search engines such as Overture, used exclusively by the then-giant portal AOL, or Inktomi, the search engine adopted by Microsoft, collected revenues from the sites whose pages they indexed. Overture was also successful in attracting online ads with its policy of allowing advertisers to pay for high-ranking search listings, the very format that Brin and Page scorned. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 221

Categorization

• XREF: Sets up the contrast between early search monetization models and the behavioral-surplus model that became surveillance capitalism. — connects to: Paid ad links colonize the priority visibility once reserved for pertinent content; Google copied Overture’s ranked-advertisement model during a cash emergency — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 266; Early radio networks funded programming by combining licensed sustaining shows with advertiser-sponsored content — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 339 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Early radio networks funded programming by combining licensed sustaining shows with advertiser-sponsored content #expands (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 339