On Thu, Sep 19, 2002 at 10:15:19AM +0100, Brad Bollenbach wrote: > > So my question is, if you can get a decent enough website going to make > thousands and thousands of people click on a "Send" button (Hotmail) or > a "Google Search" button, how then do you have any hope of actually > making money off that?
Errr. I wouldn't use those two as examples. Google's model has *never* been to make money off the Internet. They use the Internet as the test-bed for their technologies which they sell at corporate rates to corporate customers (eg to index and search company intranets). The Google Answers service is the first to actually make money directly off their Internet visitors - and it works by taking a %age of what is effectively a peer-peer service. Hotmail is, purely and simply a loss-leader, and I suspect it will never be anything else. I'm not sure that clicks = money is a sufficient way to think about it, but that's JMO. Ben
