Google’s 2004 financial results ended the search for a workable internet business model.

Evidence

In the years following its IPO in 2004, Google’s spectacular financial breakthrough first astonished and then magnetized the online world. Silicon Valley investors had doubled down on risk for years, in search of that elusive business model that would make it all worthwhile. When Google’s financial results went public, the hunt for mythic treasure was officially over. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 289

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader economic-history line on advertising/attention economics the reader has been assembling.