i remember the day jordan hayes introduced us to google at another list. you could ask me, where were you the first day you met google? and it would be as iconic as the kennedy assassination is for some.
at any rate, my memory is that no one knew its revenue model at the time or that they assumed it was going to be based on selling its search to corporations. fortunately, at work today, I happened to be doing work on a search engine and had the opportunity to read some of google's own self-histories in which they calimed exactly that.
do you, by any chance, remember what information these predictions were made? because i really don't remember ad words become especially popular until around 2003.
and in any event i think, personally, what is hilarious about google is that all it did was end up making money on a classic revenue model, so nothing about it is new at all. like newspapers, they just provide a platform for advertisements. the difference is, they can score big on the longtail. everyone wanted to get away from the tyranny of advertisements, but it remains.
also, isn't google having to yank back about 40 of its more dubious projects because they aren't big money sinks and they can't figure out a way to use them as platforms for classified advertisements?
shag