Comment by inigyou
5 hours ago
Google's early business model was to make something cool and figure out monetization later, like many firms from that era. When they got acquired by Doubleclick, they pivoted to advertising but still took time to get it to the evil stage.
Adsense was 2003, 5 years before the doublclick acquisition.
You could claim that google in the 90s was about building something cool and making money later, but not 2000s google.
As an aside, "make something cool, monetize later" is exactly the problem. It's deferred evil. The people who wrote the check to have youmake something cool aren't paying you to make something cool, they are paying you to figure out the monetization down the road.