Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

I'd point out that Page and Brin predicted the course of their own search engine, and perhaps their own company, in 1998:

“The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.”

“We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.”

“Advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results.”

"Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious. A good example was OpenText, which was reported to be selling companies the right to be listed at the top of the search results for particular queries. This type of bias is much more insidious than advertising, because it is not clear who “deserves” to be there, and who is willing to pay money to be listed.”

“We believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm.”

“Search engines have migrated from the academic domain to the commercial. Up until now most search engine development has gone on at companies with little publication of technical details. This causes search engine technology to remain largely a black art and to be advertising oriented. With Google, we have a strong goal to push more development and understanding into the academic realm.”

> http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

Way to hijack the thread with anti-Google propaganda ...

Why is this anti Google propaganda? I can't see a single point that is not reasonable enough on its own merit, and none of them applies to Google alone, but to all search engine providers.

I think he forgot the sarcasm tag, but it's hard to tell.

First and foremost it's off-topic. Second, these are the same citations used by those who were pushing for the FTC to sue Google for antitrust, so they have political baggage, third: it's before the company was founded so it's all academic and theoretical with no actual experience behind it, fourth: context matters - choice quotes from long texts have been used for Google bashing before, some earlier this week even.

My post in fewer words: Page and Brin have wandered from their roots.

That's not "anti-Google propaganda". That's honest criticism from an old geek.

no, it's confirmed now that he's just crazy. Dude, get an objective bone in your body, otherwise you're just a crusader.

Not everyone cares about whatever is going on in antitrust, but if you're not objective, you have no argument.

> choice quotes from long texts have been used for Google bashing before, some earlier this week even

Somebody on the Internet is wrong and said something bad about Google? How dare they! At what time did this serious offence occur?

Being before or after the company was founded, being 10 years ago or today, has absolutely no bearing on whether what was said is right or not. Experience != truth, just having experience doesn't mean what you say is more likely to be right. The theoretical can be right or wrong. You haven't proven your argument at all.

This is an interesting point, but I don't see how it relates to Google doing away with 20% time.

Just watching as an interested outsider for all these years and partly based on the paper quoted above, much of Google's early energy and innovation was based on the simple idea of extending and applying knowledge of the new field in service to users.

When that focus shifted to exactly what Page and Brin had criticized themselves in 1998, we can clearly see that it's not the interests of the users being served anymore.

The decline of 20% time appears to go hand in hand with this shift from the focus on the user to focus on the advertiser and other interests first. I'm not claiming direct correlation but it's not a stretch to say there might be some connection.

I sometimes do wonder what would have happened if they'd decided to charge for their search engine.

Of course, putting it behind a paywall would have been a failure. But they could have possibly done a freemium model, offering better and more detailed search capability for a small monthly or yearly fee.

The difference between Google's advertisements and OpenText's is Google (usually) identifies advertisements as advertisements.

This is exactly what Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) has been doing in recent years. IMHO, the precision of results from Baidu is less competitive in many niche perspectives compared with that from Google, and many keywords draws hoax, sponsored links by liars/copycats/fake suppliers. The reason is obvious. Censorship in various ways blocks Google from entering Chinese market, and the rest of the players are just not strong enough to compete with Baidu. However, Baidu is good in providing the latest rumours and gossips on entertaining subjects/celebrities.

Also, Baidu was accused by many to have intentionally removed or weighed down the links to sites, admins of which have refused to bid advertisement or increase their advertisement bidding. I cannot explain such strategy except to hypothesize that Baidu has sustained de facto monopoly.

Not really, as zeckalpha pointed out, this is quoted out of context and was talking about OpenText:

"The difference between Google's advertisements and OpenText's is Google (usually) identifies advertisements as advertisements."

Also, Google results have gotten significantly better than they were in 1998 so even if we ignore the OpenText context, I don't see how this could be a successful prediction as you're trying to imply.

Propaganda is nothing more than an idea that spreads (propagates). Or in other words: an idea.

If they hadn't done advertising then many of the non-search products (Gmail especially) could have been behind a paywall. The brand recognition from search would build the other businesses for them.

All the analytics, google alerts, etc would have been non-free products as well.

It just would have made them much, much, much less money.

But god damn that search engine would be amazing by now.