How Google Took the Work Out of Selling Advertising

The New York Times > Business > Your Money > Techno Files: "AdSense allows Google and the advertisers to avoid the waiting. Google's great technical strength - the 'sun in its solar system,' as Mr. Stein put it - is the way it automatically grasps the themes and emphases of each Web page. With AdSense, anyone who operates a Web site - a blogger, a community activist, a retailer - installs a bit of code that transfers control of part of each page to Google. Then users who visit the page will see a short list of ads that, according to Google's analysis, represent the most likely match between the subjects discussed there and the advertisers' products - ads for veterinary supplies on a cat fanciers' site, for example. Each time someone clicks on an advertiser's link, the advertiser pays a fee to Google, and Google passes some of that on to the Web site operator.

Why does that matter? It completes the publishing revolution brought on by the Internet. The first stage was the liberation of the reader, who, thanks to browsers, could look at publications in any part of the world. Next was the liberation of would-be publishers. Thanks to blogging tools, anyone can present his or her views online. And now, thanks to automated ad sales, small publishers have a more viable hope of creating a business, and keeping independent voices, than they did even a year ago. A. J. Liebling's wisecrack that "freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one" takes on new meaning when technical and financial barriers to creating a Web-based press drop so low."