How You Make Google Rich
At the time of this writing, Google is sitting at a $710 billion USD market cap on A shares alone, with a similar cap on C shares, making it the largest company on the Nasdaq with combined market caps. Even with only its $710 billion, Google sits comfortably in the top 5 with the other titans of tech. Their path has been one of great growth, and Google has provided the world with some of the most useful products available today (search engine, Android, G Suite, Chrome, and a plethora of other products). The world has genuinely become much better off by the presence of Google, and it seems obvious that their impact on our daily lives will continue to increase and give us newer and better products.
However, with all this amazing technology comes a price. One of the greatest revenue generators for Google is its advertising platform, which in 2017 provided $95.4 billion USD. While this is impressive, what may come as a surprise is that their total revenue for that year was $110.9 billion USD, meaning ad revenue accounted for 86% of all revenue. Google relies heavily on their ad platform, but who can blame them? They have spent a significant amount of time gaining users, and it has now become nearly impossible to avoid using some Google product daily. However, this advertising comes at a major price to the end user.
End users have now begun trading their personal information for little to nothing in return. By regularly utilizing Google services, we provide a vast amount of information that Google can then give to advertisers and create further revenue. I was able to request an archive of all the data Google has on me, and it totals over 15.4 GB. From every personal preference you may have, to location tracking, and even having entire profiles built around your personality, Google has an amazing power to target the exact products that are available for you. This is all fine and dandy, and I honestly don’t mind that Google has all this information personally (I view it as part of my digital legacy). However, by putting in work to provide Google with such valuable information, we are rewarded with the opportunity to spend money. This doesn’t make sense from a basic economic standpoint.
While it may seem harmless, we work very hard to provide Google with information. Spending massive amounts of time on the internet, and even just simply browsing around gives Google a plethora of insights into the individual and society. This information is so valuable that it keeps Google running. At the end of the day, the user is given 0% compensation for such work. The argument is that most Google services are free, but the cost of time and data outweighs the benefits. Time should be traded for high value items or money, not access to services that in turn put us to work. The Economist declared in May 2017 that data has now passed oil as the world’s most valuable resource.
While Google seems to be here to stay, there were other companies that seemed to be in the same position in the past and were dethroned, such as Yahoo and Myspace. With that being said, there are obvious solutions in blockchain that put the power of data aggregation back into the hands of the general population, which takes power away from Google and weakens their position as top dog. The most obvious project currently with a working platform is the Brave browser. For those that are unfamiliar with the project, Brave is a browser started by Brendan Eich, founder of Mozilla Firefox. The Firefox browser has been in constant competition for years with Chrome and is often seen as the primary alternative to Chrome. With Brendan focusing on the Brave browser, the intention is to reward users for their work browsing the internet by providing partial amounts of ad revenue back to the consumer. This program should be launching in Q1 2019.
The model for Brave makes a lot of sense. End users are rewarded a percentage of marketing funds whenever they see ads. However, they also have the ability to browse without ads. For advertisers, Brave technology assists in reducing the amount of bots that will click and view ads, saving advertisers substantial amounts of money. According to Brave, over $7 billion dollars of advertiser money was lost to fraud from bots every year.
It seems obvious that Brave will attract a substantial amount of users once the advertising platform goes live, as people will now be able to make money off of their data sharing and time. This will also be a gold mine for advertisers, in that they have the ability to save money by lower advertising costs and less fraud. With over 10 million active users currently, Brave has shown that they are off to a good start and have a strong future ahead of them.
