When Facebook Home came out, some people freaked out at the idea of seeing ads on their home screen. They pointed at Facebook and called them an evil company that just wants to shove sponsored throats down your throat and collect your data.
The funny thing is, most of the people who said those things are huge Google fans.
How do you think Google makes their money? I’ll tell you by quoting their Q1 2013 financials:
“Google Revenues (advertising and other): Google revenues were $12.95 billion, or 93% of consolidated revenues, in the first quarter of 2013, representing a 22% increase over first quarter 2012 revenues of $10.65 billion.”
There are other numbers in there that mainly matter to analysts, but it’s that 93% that I want to highlight. Google is, for all intents and purposes, ad advertising company. They make awesome services, and then give them away, in order to show you more ads.
I’m not saying you should cancel your Gmail account and switch to Outlook, or stop using Google Talk and switch to Skype, but I just want to point out that you can’t call out one company (namely Facebook) for making a living on ads while at the same time championing Google.
That’s just dumb.