Google faced the same advertising trap it had exploited to beat Yahoo.

Evidence

In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin had written that reliance on advertising would inevitably make it difficult to create the best possible product; in the late 2010s, in competition with Apple, they faced their own prophecy. Since the death of its founder, Steve Jobs, Apple had softened somewhat in its opposition to open platforms, and was able to use its enormous profits to build better products. Google had bested rivals like Yahoo!, who were hamstrung by their own excessive reliance on advertising, but over the late 2010s, in competition with Apple, Google got a taste of its own medicine. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1130

Categorization

• XREF: Pays off the 1998 Page/Brin quote and parallels the fate of earlier ad-dependent rivals like Yahoo described in earlier chapters. — connects to: Google’s search ads sold only intent-rich moments rather than mass attention — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 889; Google’s advertising model prevented it from optimizing Android against the iPhone. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1129; Apple’s adblocking simultaneously served users and injured Google. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1128 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Google’s early ad-matching patents replaced guesswork with predictive behavioral data #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 245
• Apple’s adblocking simultaneously served users and injured Google. #complicates (0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1128