Google copied Overture’s ranked-advertisement model during a cash emergency

Evidence

The first 12 months of Google were not a cakewalk, because the company didn’t start off in the business that it eventually tapped. At first it went in a different direction, which was selling its technology—selling licenses for its search engines to larger internet properties and to corporations.… Cash was going out of the window at a feral rate during the first six, seven months. And then, very ingeniously, Larry… and Sergey… and others fastened on a model that they had seen this other company, Overture, develop, which was ranked advertisements. They saw how it could be improved and enhanced and made it their own, and that transformed the business. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 266

Categorization

• SHARE: For anyone into startup history: Google began selling search licenses, burned cash, then appropriated Overture’s ranked-ads model under duress.
• XREF: connects to: Early search engines monetized through licensing and paid ranking listings — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 221

Broader Connections

• Early search engines monetized through licensing and paid ranking listings #expands (0.82) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 221