Google’s main competitor in the mobile space—<a href="https://www.wired.com/2015/06/apples-support-ad-blocking-will-upend-web-works/" target="_self">added a feature</a> to their devices that allowed users to block ads.Devices running iOS were responsible for as much as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/technology/personaltech/a-murky-road-ahead-for-android-despite-market-dominance.html" target="_self">75% of Google’s revenue </a>from mobile search ads, which is probably why Google was paying Apple <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-rising-tac-and-apple-theory-2017-10" target="_self">billions of dollars</a> every year to remain the default search engine on Apple devices. By making this move, Apple altered the <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/24/apple-lays-the-groundwork-to-kill-online-advertising/" target="_self">future of online advertising</a>.This move from Apple reflected the <a href="https://pagefair.com/blog/2016/mobile-adblocking-report/" target="_self">unprecedented mainstream adoption</a> of ad blocking software happening at the time.

No More Ads

If losing a major portion of their audience and annoying the rest wasn’t bad enough, Google also failed to get ahead of one of the biggest shifts in the internet’s history.Google’s strategy since day one could be summed up as “aggregate and advertise,” as George Gilder put it in Life After Google. Every word uttered to Google Assistant, every action in any of Google’s numerous apps, and every data point about every one of their billions of users was stored and analyzed in the name of more accurate advertising.

Mistake After Mistake

A shift from <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/11/google-isnt-safe-from-yahoos-fate/" target="_self">search to discovery</a> also started to take shape in the late 2010s: When shoppers weren’t searching for things directly on Amazon, things were finding them. Advertisers realized that money previously spent on Google’s search ads was better spent either on Amazon ads or <a href="https://www.sharethrough.com/resources/in-feed-ads-vs-banner-ads/" target="_self">native ads in content feeds</a>, like Instagram and Facebook. Google had no engaging content feeds, so it completely missed the wave, just like it had with <a href="https://mashable.com/2015/08/02/google-plus-history/" target="_self">social media</a> and <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/06/google-allo-messages-rcs-hangouts-mess/" target="_self">instant messaging</a>.

Search Platform Is Hidden

Google was enticing people into trading their privacy, data, and attention for the convenience of its amazing free products and services, some of which had no good alternatives. However, scandal after scandal after scandal proved that the trade might not be worth it, and people started to question what they were giving up by clicking “I agree.”

You Are The Product

True attribution and accurate targeting used to be rocket science, black magic, and nearly impossible.The breakthrough was this: If everything from interest matching to ad placement happened inside the user’s device, it would be possible to show the user ads they would actually find relevant and understand exactly which ads they interacted with and how, all without the user’s private data ever leaving the device.

Black Magic Ads

Google made almost all its money from ads. It was a booming business—until it wasn’t. Here’s how things looked right before the most spectacular crash the technology industry had ever seen.&nbsp;

Reporting on Google’s future with today’s facts

Google’s products were free, innovative, and used by billions of people. In order to get access to these free products, people had to give up their personal data and their valuable attention. Google’s ads weren’t something its users wanted—they were simply a tax for accessing the Google ecosystem.

The Tides Are Turning

Back when Google was still just an idea, its founders <a href="http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html" target="_self">thought</a> that “advertising funded search engines [would] be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.”They changed their minds.With that change, Google became one of the wealthiest, most powerful companies in history. Search was Google’s golden goose, as well as its only unambiguous win. So when Amazon <a href="http://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-continues-grow-lead-google-starting-point-online-shoppers/" target="_self">rapidly surpassed Google</a> as the top product search destination in 2017, Google’s foundations began to falter.

The Crumbling

Google made almost all its money from ads. It was a booming business — until it wasn’t. Here’s how things looked right before the most spectacular crash the technology industry had ever seen.