Chapter 6, Google 2000-2004: Zero to $3 Billion in Five Years Summary

Google's first attempt at making money uses the CPM (Cost Per M, the Roman numeral for one thousand) model, which amounts to charging advertisers by the number of ad views rather than ad clicks. CPM is the prevailing business model before Bill Gross comes along with GoTo.com and pay-per-click. Until that time, Google tries a patched-together business plan of CPM and keyword-based advertising with banner ads as backup in case revenue falls too far. This works well enough until the NASDAQ market crash in 2000. This dries up advertising revenues for both Google's patched-together plan and banner ads. Forced to seek out a working business plan, Google turns to Bill Gross and GoTo.com. This leads to the AdWords product that Google introduces in the fall of...