Shareholder growth demands inevitably erode any careful bargain an attention merchant strikes

Evidence

While the safeguards in AdWords would keep Google’s core product uncompromised for the time being, corporate life is long, and shareholder demand for growth unremitting. In Wall Street’s view, even the most robust advertising revenues always have room for improvement. In time, this reality would put pressure on the original bargain that Google struck with the public. Even if AdWords was a paradigm shift, it was still advertising, and Google, however ingenious, was still an attention merchant. It would, henceforth, always be serving two masters, beauty and the beast. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 893

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The ‘two masters, beauty and the beast’ formulation is the tragic structural law of attention capitalism — any scrupled safeguard is provisional against unremitting growth demands. This is a recurring spine of the whole book.
• XREF: Builds on the book’s earlier treatment of how other media companies’ editorial independence eroded under advertising pressure over decades.