Organizing the World's What?

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Google, which absurdly still claims that its sole mission is to "organize the world's information," is officialy turning its crappy text-ad network into a <u>crappy banner network</u>. In the process, it's formally ditching the company's already marshmallow-soft promise of targeting ads solely on user intent and relevancy.</p>



As Battelle points out in the New York Times article, "This drives the nail into the coffin of the idea that Google is a search business. It is an advertising business that has nothing particularly to do with search."</p>



But not only does a banner network have nothing to do with search, it's not a particularly good business model. Unless they go back on their long-standing promise not target ads based upon users' search histories, I don't see how this is different from the AskJeeves Network or the 24/7 Network. Except, of course, that Google's network will accept sites that not even those others will. (We're talking seriously poor inventory here.)</p>



In any case, best of luck to Google. And welcome back to 1997.</p>

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