Google is an advertising company. Not a search engine

When Google first launched, it was known for being a high-quality search engine, with its founders believing that advertising created an inherent conflict of interest.

However, by 2000, Google entered the advertising space, partnering with publishers to display ads and taking a share of the revenue.

In 2007, Google acquired YouTube, gaining access to more ad inventory, and in 2008, it bought DoubleClick, which was a leading adtech platform that helped publishers manage ad inventory and data. This strengthened Google's ad dominance, setting the stage for its influence in digital advertising.

By 2016, Google integrated user data from all its services, including Gmail, YouTube, and search, creating detailed profiles of users. This data was leveraged to manipulate ad auctions, driving up ad prices on third-party websites while pushing ad demand to its own properties.

Today, Google’s ad ecosystem is a $20 billion domestic business, with publishers selling 5 trillion digital ads yearly, making Google the central "operating system" for digital advertising.

To access Google Ads' exclusive demand, publishers had to use Google’s ad server and exchange, allowing Google to charge hefty fees, keeping up to 50% of ad revenue. This dominance was furthered by Google’s shift in strategy.

In early 2019, internal concerns about slowing search revenue prompted changes. In 2020, Prabhakar Raghavan, previously Head of Ads, took over search.

Under his leadership, search quality has been criticized for prioritizing metrics like engagement over delivering high-quality results. Google’s incentive structure has shifted from user experience to maximizing engagement, leading to more spammy and low-quality search outcomes.

The root cause? Shareholder supremacy. With a focus on boosting share prices and dividends, Google’s priority has shifted away from serving users and toward maximizing financial returns at the cost of innovation and user experience.

Shareholder supremacy

Shareholder supremacy, the dominant business ideology in recent decades, views a company’s primary responsibility as maximizing returns for shareholders. Under this framework, decisions are driven by financial metrics rather than the quality of the product or service delivered to customers.

In Google's case, the relentless pursuit of shareholder value has reshaped its core mission from a company that initially sought to provide the most accurate and relevant search results to one that prioritizes ad revenue and financial growth at the expense of user experience.

The effects of shareholder supremacy are seen across the tech industry but are particularly visible in Google’s evolution. When the company shifted its focus from providing the best search results to prioritizing ads and engagement metrics, it began treating its users more as products—sources of data that could be mined and sold to advertisers—than as customers.

The result has been a steady degradation in the quality of Google's core service, search.

And I'm not the only one who has noticed.

Following Google's SEO guidelines is like taking advice from the casino. Please remember if you're doing SEO: Google is not your friend; they do not want you to win. Follow the money. What does Google actually want? 77% of their revenue comes from businesses paying for search ads. Meaning: Lots of inflated salaries are dependent on you NOT winning at SEO. ~ Nathan Gotch

In 2020, search was less about giving users the information they needed quickly and more about keeping them on the platform longer, exposing them to more ads.

Instead of serving as a neutral tool to deliver relevant information, the search engine became a vehicle to increase advertising revenue, no longer guided by its original mission of "organizing the world’s information."

This shift is not just a Google problem—it's a reflection of a larger trend across industries where the needs of investors are prioritized over customers, employees, and even long-term innovation. CEOs are often rewarded based on short-term financial gains, which encourages cost-cutting measures such as reducing R&D, mass layoffs, and prioritizing profit over product integrity.

In Google's case, these incentives have led to a focus on growth metrics, like engagement time and ad revenue, which in turn has degraded the quality of the user experience that made it a leader in the first place.

What we're seeing now is the culmination of years of decisions driven by shareholder-first thinking. The search experience has deteriorated, trust in the platform has eroded, and users are turning to alternatives.

As Google continues to prioritize financial performance over user experience, it raises questions about the long-term viability of this approach—not just for Google but for any company that sacrifices product quality for shareholder returns.

In the end, the erosion of user trust and product quality could have significant consequences, not just for Google’s business but for the entire digital ecosystem.

A model that prioritizes short-term profits over sustainable innovation may prove damaging in the long run, as users seek alternatives that better align with their needs and expectations.

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Author of GreenFingers.info

Hi there! I am a seasoned digital marketer with a wealth of experience across a range of marketing activities, from SEO, digital marketing, GPT prompting, social media to email automation and ecommerce, with a love for oil painting, reading, houseplants and mountain biking.