[Info-vax] IE8 got me too :-( Sorry Jeff.

[FrankS]

On Jan 18, 8:41 am, billg... at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
> As I said, I have yet to understand what Googles business is other than
> selling snake oil.
>

Well, I'm sure there's a lot of snake oil involved but the basic
source of revenue is from Google AdWords.  That is, they sell
advertising services to companies with web sites.  That's a pretty big
target audience.

The snake oil (from what I've seen) is accurately accounting for
clicks and identifying fraudulent click sources.  The odds are very
highly in Google's favor that fraud from outside sources which benefit
Google can't be traced, or the cost of tracing is too high.  So Google
must get a measurable chunk of money as a side-effect of the criminal
activity of others.

I speak from experience on this, as I am a Google AdWords customer and
there was questionable activity charged to my account which, when
challenged, was dismissed as legitimate.  Getting over 300 clicks from
a single, parked web page which had no content relevant to my
advertising campaign didn't seem legit to me, but Google felt
otherwise.

There was a show on CNBC not long ago ("Inside the Mind of Google",
which may still be airing in repeats) which you can read about here:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/33831099

www.noesys.com