This viewpoint as raganwald expressed it is too oversimplifying for my tastes.
It's pretty .. well, wrong.. to say that all Google engineers are working on is putting ads on web pages. Similarly it's not true that a whole generation of people are working on ads. Google is working on a tremendous number of things -- as is the rest of this industry. It boggles the mind.
I do; however, agree with the generalization of his point (and it's not a unique or new one) that what the technology industry has produced in the first 10 years of the 21st century is mostly a letdown compared to what got done in the last 10 years of the 20th century.
The first dot-com bubble left us with the worldwide infrastructure that powers the Internet today. What will this social-networking bubble leave us with when it pops?
Hopefully strong AI and the best possible tools for dealing with petabytes of data -- but this is likely just wishful thinking on my part.
Yeah I think in many cases its all a matter of perspective. You can look at any Google product, analyze it long enough and then understand how it will lead to a stronger advertising business model for them. On the other hand you can look at it and say that is potentially exciting technology for reasons that have nothing to do with advertising.
Probably most of the engineers at Google don't think of themselves as working in advertising and probably shouldn't but Id say almost indisputedly their paycheck is mostly coming from advertising and people clicking on mindless ads.
I think the main problem is how do you solve and build business around interesting problems that don't have the ability to be monetized through click advertising which most of the internet seems to be funded by.
It's pretty .. well, wrong.. to say that all Google engineers are working on is putting ads on web pages. Similarly it's not true that a whole generation of people are working on ads. Google is working on a tremendous number of things -- as is the rest of this industry. It boggles the mind.
I do; however, agree with the generalization of his point (and it's not a unique or new one) that what the technology industry has produced in the first 10 years of the 21st century is mostly a letdown compared to what got done in the last 10 years of the 20th century.
The first dot-com bubble left us with the worldwide infrastructure that powers the Internet today. What will this social-networking bubble leave us with when it pops?
Hopefully strong AI and the best possible tools for dealing with petabytes of data -- but this is likely just wishful thinking on my part.