Google Will Eat Itself (2005)

https://www.gwei.org/index.php

by slater • 4 years ago

210 131 4 years ago

Vladimof• 4 years ago

They own ~$400k... More then I thought

The ownership counter has been never updated since circa 2008 [1], and there has been a 2-for-1 stock split in 2014 so they actually own (819 * 2) stocks * 2228.55 USD per stock ~= 3.65 million USD today.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20080814021128/http://www.gwei.o...

Sebb767• 4 years ago

Or, alternatively, only 202.345.102 years (instead of 202.345.117) until GWEI fully owns Google.

joshspankit2• 4 years ago

Is there any record of how much more they’ve purchased?

alpaca128• 4 years ago

That website's background drives me insane. Why would you animate the whole background?

202.345.117 Years until GWEI fully owns Google.

Oh well. It's a funny idea though.

TAKEMYMONEY• 4 years ago

I'd argue it's an accessibility concern, not just an annoyance

https://www.w3.org/TR/coga-usable/#distractions-user-story

Userstyle to remove it:

    @-moz-document domain("gwei.org") {
        body {
            background-image: none;
            background-color: #333;
        }
    }

(can be installed with Stylus or similar plugin)

natly• 4 years ago

The author didn't claim it was an accessibility concern.

kingcharles• 4 years ago

I think perhaps they were trying to be cool, like their namesake [1] and failed.

[1] https://www.thedesignersrepublic.com/pop-will-eat-itself

oli5679• 4 years ago

I wish them the best of luck in this endeavour!

sbf5013• 4 years ago

Are those numbers real? Or is this a late (early?) April Fools? I can't even tell anymore.

United857• 4 years ago

Google share price $495 -- this is over a decade out of date

backtoyoujim• 4 years ago

Although they have a 20 to 1 split coming up in July.

jffry• 4 years ago

Here's a recent mirror if the site's still getting hugged to death: https://web.archive.org/web/20220612225118/https://www.gwei....

The short description from the page itself is:

"We generate money by serving Google text advertisments on a network of hidden Websites. With this money we automatically buy Google shares. We buy Google via their own advertisment! Google eats itself - but in the end "we" own it!"

KennyBlanken• 4 years ago

Huh. I thought it was commentary on how Google will grow to become such a large organization that it cannot function effectively. Seems to me we're well past that.

There isn't a single google product I'd recommend to anyone.

They seem pathologically incapable of innovation. A trick pony hasn't come out of the barn in a decade, they've killed off or left to stagnate numerous products, and they're driving youtube into the ground.

Their core user-facing feature, search, is arguably the worst it's ever been. Garbage results thanks to over-thesaurus-ing your search terms and "quick cards" that are laughably terrible accuracy-wise.

The risks of relying on Google for anything are enormous. Even if you're a 1,000 seat organization using their products, stories abound about how they don't care what happens to you. Even at 10,000 seats they still don't seem to care.

mccorrinall2• 4 years ago

None? I know a lot of products which I could recommend: Go, Android, Maps, Youtube w Adblock, Search (for the average joe, I prefer using kagi).

Of course products such as yt and search are far from being perfect, but they are still in a commendable state.

Kstarek• 4 years ago

This is such a tired take, they're doing plenty of innovation in AI and bringing them to consumers with innovative products like Google Home.

I really love my Google smart home speaker and it's been extremely useful day to day.

Being able to just say "Google set an apartment in my calendar to meet John for coffee next week at 3pm" is infinitely more convenient than opening my phone or laptop and clicking through the UI to do so. Or "Google remind me to cancel my subscription in 10 days" or "Set a timer for 10 minutes" etc etc.

Likewise Firebase has made it infinitely easier and smoother to deploy a web app. Google Domains is probably the most seamless way to purchase and register a domain.

Waymo is innovating like crazy and possesses the most advanced autonomous driver agent.

Wing is innovating drone delivery in rural and suburban areas.

They are innovating to the highest degree and anyone who claims otherwise is deluding themselves.

(I'm not affiliated with Google in any way, but I do hold stock)

spencerchubb• 4 years ago

I still enjoy youtube, drive, translate, maps, android, android auto, and google login.

mgdlbp• 4 years ago

I grumble about the state of search all the time (on HN, even), but the NLP is undoubtedly very helpful in the domains it's suited for. I regularly use it to answer queries that a few years ago would have needed to be a Q&A post on the correct site or subreddit followed by a substantial wait -- often when searching for some concept that I can partially describe but have forgotten the name of; within the first page (often impressively the first result) will be an official site, Wikipedia page, or forum post about the exact thing, without any words in common between query and result. Of course, there also needs to be some way to make sure that doesn't happen when not desired!

kzrdude2• 4 years ago

What about Gmail? We take it for granted, that's also Google's curse, they are "infrastructure".

dheera• 4 years ago

"We generate money by serving Google text advertisments on a network of hidden Websites"

What does that mean?

"Google text advertisements"

Advertisements for Google.com? Advertisements on Google ads?

"hidden websites"

Authenticated websites? Websites that ban listing by google crawler? Websites that ban google crawler IPs?

Can someone please explain how this makes money?

boudin• 4 years ago

That's the way advertisement works on the web. You have a website, you host ads, google pushes its ads via your website and you get paid for it.

The phrasing text advertisement comes from the fact that this is quite an old initiative. Back then ads were a lot of really flashy blinking gifs or flash animations with sound. Google, in the don't be evil days, was promoting sober ads, just text basically.

Edit: by hidden I think they mean that those are secret

tgsovlerkhgsel• 4 years ago

It was supposed to work through click fraud on Adsense, back when Adsense had text ads.

(https://www.gwei.org/img/GWEI_SYSTEM.gif)

lelandfe• 4 years ago

https://www.theregister.com/2008/08/13/google_will_eat_itsel...

Note that The Register deemed them a hoax (although they did not elaborate). Made by this artist (who insists it is real): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubermorgen.

An interview with the artist: https://culturejamming.realvinylz.net/interviewIe.html

shadowgovt• 4 years ago

It's a cute idea, but it fundamentally doesn't work the way one might think.

A majority of the voting shares are owned by the founders, who are not obliged to sell at any price. It is functionally impossible to do a hostile takeover of Google without causing one of them to defect.

onenite• 4 years ago

Who isn’t eating themselves these days? It’s 2022. Autophagy. We’ve been doing this for millennia, for all time.

Get with the program.

dang• 4 years ago

Google Will Eat Itself (2005) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24008297 - July 2020 (85 comments)

Google Will Eat Itself (2005) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19784400 - April 2019 (65 comments)

Google Will Eat Itself - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7410732 - March 2014 (126 comments)

GWEI: Plot to make Google eat itself - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2628328 - June 2011 (21 comments)

GWEI - Google Will Eat Itself - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=273337 - Aug 2008 (13 comments)

Presumably loosely related?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_Will_Eat_Itself

sshagent• 4 years ago

It did indeed make my brain unearth old memories of enjoying PWEI. Had completedly forgotten about them until this GWEI link.

MiscIdeaMaker99• 4 years ago

I remember Pop Will Eat Itself! They opened for Nine Inch Nails back when I was in high school (the early half of the 90s), and I remember the local radio station here playing one of their songs for the firs time. I bought their CD after that.

melony2• 4 years ago

They need a more sophisticated trading strategy for this to work, because as long as they are providing cashflow for Google, their share purchases will never catch up to Google's valuation.

harvie• 4 years ago

Thank you :-)

SMAAART• 4 years ago

art piece by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubermorgen

Clever.

AlbertCory3• 4 years ago

Maps monetization: I find it hilarious (in a sad way) that they're finally embracing that, if they are. Former Googler here.

I was the Ads emissary to the Owned and Operated Properties (like Maps and YouTube) in 2010. I managed to increase the RPM by a small but noticeable amount. They used to have ads on the bottom of the screen, which was the revenue source I was optimizing. Then later I was actually IN Maps when Marissa Mayer was nominally in charge. We were trying to develop "maps for business." That all came to naught when they decided it wasn't worth the bother.

Maps is fabulous PR for Google. I can't count the times someone outside of Google said to me, "Oh, I love Google Maps!" But it's a gigantic money loser and always will be.

"What about imputed revenue?" you ask? They don't want to measure that, because then every patent litigant would use it against them, and Maps attracts a LOT of patent lawsuits.

randomsearch• 4 years ago

Can’t they just sell maps data eg restaurant listings, traffic data, to third parties? Then the user wins with the app and the network effects ensure valuable data.

IceWreck• 4 years ago

They do sell API access to Google Maps which includes all that.

Cthulhu_• 4 years ago

I could imagine a scheme where companies can pay to promote themselves and end up higher or more prominent in business searches. Maps is how I usually search for e.g. plumbers.

kibwen• 4 years ago

I'd be flabbergasted if this isn't already how this works.

m-i-l• 4 years ago

"Maps is how I usually search for e.g. plumbers."

I used to search for tradespeople in this way, but then I realised there's a big industry of while-labelled SEO-friendly companies which register 100s or 1000s of names like "<location> plumber" or "<location> roofer" each with a pin on the map at <location>. When you contact them you go to a call centre 100s or 1000s of miles away who know nothing about your area, they outsource the actual work to gig workers, and when they start getting negative reviews that instance just disappears.

benhurmarcel• 4 years ago

That's already how it works.

Advertised businesses in Maps appear at a higher zoom level with a square icon, and up higher in results. An example in Paris: https://i.postimg.cc/26dGZCkX/09169-E16-6-CFB-44-BA-9189-693...

jarek83• 4 years ago

If it looses money, I wonder if they will shut it down one day, like they like to do.

pjmlp2• 4 years ago

It would make TomTom and Garmin very happy, I guess.

gtirloni• 4 years ago

It's better than anything out there. So if they're not interested in making money out of it, I'm sure someone else would buy it promptly.

blfr• 4 years ago

Probably not, same as Gmail.

papito• 4 years ago

The value of Maps is in user information. They know what you look for, they know where you've been. They can extrapolate what you are doing and what you will do. This all helps in fine-tuning your marketing target profile, and serving you better ads.

I am learning this as I am reading the book Stolen Focus. The author goes in-depth on how tech companies are turning us into Pavlov's proverbial Dogs. We are lab hamsters who, when taught to respond correctly to stimuli, give them money.

megous• 4 years ago

I dislike Google Maps ever since some redesigns in the past, that made whole countries look like rainforests, and de-emphasized everything that's not a road, etc. Honestly I barely rember the last time when Google maps were useful as maps and not just for GPS navigation. Must be > 8 years already. Looking at some historical screenshots, they still had a reasonably usable design at around the time they introduced Street View.

Kinda wonder if this is in part because of: "this way we've found we can make users use GPS more often and be more precisely tracked/monetized" by degrading uses where you can easily orient and navigate yourself without turning on GPS.

goodpoint• 4 years ago

gigantic money loser

That's not the right metric to use. Google has a long history of using software and services as a weapon to prevent competitors from entering a market, or to control a market even if it's not immediately/directly profitable.

Once it's no more useful it's suddenly dropped, e.g. Google Reader.

Oh, hello golang!

bigbacaloa• 4 years ago

Is it really a money loser? They get detailed information on your social relations, your daily routines, your shopping habits, where you enjoy your vices, etc. That's all useful in generating income in other contexts. It's short sighted to view it as a money loser.

spicybright• 4 years ago

It's also good PR. I would think someone that thinks google maps is good is more likely to use other google products that are more profitable.

Granted, that's a pretty difficult metric to track (if you even can).

abirch• 4 years ago

Seems like location based Ads would be $$$. E.g., if Google knows that I'm not usually in Los Angeles; it knows what I like and could serve ads that'd be great for me when I google "places to eat in LA"

melony2• 4 years ago

Just Street View alone will easily blow through the profits they make from those data unless they use the data for something like commodity trading.

AlbertCory3• 4 years ago

For everyone pointing out all the indirect revenue benefits of Maps:

You're right, but in every patent infringement case against geo, the plaintiff's "damages expert" makes up a theory about this, so they can go after the AdWords money pot. Because there's no revenue in geo.

If Google endorsed one such theory, that would be bad, very bad, no good at all.

technovader• 4 years ago

How does one own a company by serving ads. I don't get it

dewey• 4 years ago

Google pays you if you deliver ads from their network on your website. They have a bunch of websites that can show ads, Google pays them. They use the money to buy Google shares.

dusted• 4 years ago

Oh, in a mere 200 million years, neat! sits back and waits

dt3ft• 4 years ago

Any minute now, right? /s

DeathArrow• 4 years ago

Since Google grows at a much faster rate than their ability to buy shares, their owned part of Google will always be insignificant.

MrBuddyCasino• 4 years ago

    By establishing this autocannibalistic model we deconstruct the new global advertisment mechanisms by rendering them into a surreal click-based economic model.

artists not sounding like pseudo-intellectual humanities academics challenge: impossible

susrev• 4 years ago

Great idea, but wow the background on the website is SO unbelievably annoying

Google Will Eat Itself (2005)

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