Google also had, realistically, no competition in the online ads business for most of that time. Microsoft tried so hard but never broke into that market. No other online ad company could even come close to google 2000-2010 in terms of scale, technical chops, etc.

It’s easy to have principals, it’s hard to live up to them. The first real competitor to Google’s online ads dominance was Facebook and has caused Google to completely shit the bed (from practices and policy, they’re obviously doing well money wise)

Man, this is depressing. While I wasn’t “raised online” since I was raised on dialup and couldn’t block the phone line all that long.

I still remember when google was the new kid on the block and the general feeling about them across early Internet forums.

Microsoft was evil because they copied everybody else’s stuff and wanted to charge for it. Apple was clueless making expensive junk. Sun was a darling for a while at least until they started pulling shit.

Enter mother-fucking-Google. Ethical. Honest. Not evil. Smart. Supporting open source. And on top of all that, FREE to use. Like Microsoft wants to charge you for hotmail if you want an inbox > 2MB? Fucking EVIL!!! Google is ethical because they are completely free!!! And I hear they are working on an email service too. Google just wants to shepherd the internet and protect it from companies like Microsoft, Apple, and AOL.

Oh Google.

lol me too. I grew up in the 90s/early 2000s so had no online gaming. I also had no friends to play with and only ever played against the computer. First time I got to play against someone was in college, and he got super mad at my button mashing. He was trying to do all those combos and stuff and I was just mashing butting and just destroying him. He was livid saying “wtf that’s not how you play what are you doing”