After having read a lot about Google for an article I did that came out last month, I pretty much know a lot of surface information about Google guys Sergei Brin and Larry Page, or at least enough to write that article.
I just read a new one here though, http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-1869450_1,00.html, and it helped answer some of the questions I was thinking of in relation to ads, and how it fit in on Brin and Page’s “Don’t Be Evil” slogan.
Especially interesting is that apparently, they were not in favor of ads at all, to wit:
The duo wondered how best to navigate this maze (sustaining their business without selling out to ads). Anything that compromised the relationship of trust they had with their users would be unacceptable to them, even if it generated a lot of money for Google. They were uncertain about advertising, and had included a strongly worded statement on the subject in a 1998 paper they published on Google technology.
Ad-funded search engines are �inherently biased towards the advertisers�, they wrote, suggesting that �the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for consumers to find what they want�.
What a statement, especially in the light of how seven years later, their own Adsense has almost single handedly made marketing one’s site the number one priority for website owners.
Another interesting quote is this:
..they hated to clutter the clean interface that had been its calling card from the start, so they kept the homepage free of ads, and they developed strict standards for the size and type of ads they would display elsewhere. They decided also to have a bright line on the results page that separated the free search results from the ads, which they would label �Sponsored Links�. That way, nobody could argue that the search results were combined with the ads, yet the ads would be clicked on more often under the heading �Sponsored Links� than if they were simply labelled �Ads�.
I had been wondering what the future of the now ubiquitous Google ads will be, considering the sizes and design have been pretty much the same for a year now I think, an eternity in internet time.
Now as I design sites, I always think of integrating ads as best as I can into them, to make it look as natural as possible, and not stand out or take away from the topic, or at least try to, considering the squarish ad formats don’t really give you a lot to work with.
The statement above is an indication that things will remain as they are. Ads looking like ads, and not fooling people into thinking they’re part of the content. It also answered questions as to what Google thinks of those who do that sort of thing. There were a few sites that managed to do this, their favorite format I noticed being the easy to edit 125×125 button:
Just looking at it, any webmaster with decent html+CSS skills will be salivating in the mouth thinking of a listings type of site (classifieds, directories, lists of contents, etc.), and sneaking one of that in there for the accidental click and $$. It’s almost unbearable.