The Trillion Dollar Scam - How Google Really Makes Money

Hello, I'm Ryan F9 and this is a

bicycle. Bicycles are for children and

adults with DUIs, but I'm riding one

today because it might help a buddy of

mine. A buddy on the losing end of a

trillion dollar scam. This video is

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So, how does a search engine scam a

trillion dollars? Well, you remember in

1998 the internet was really annoying to

use and you could search for the Stanley

Cup and end up on the personal blog of

some dude named Stanley who sells

dishwear.

So Google's founder wrote the page rank

algorithm. Imagine a tiny internet of

three websites. A links to B, B to C,

and C to A. A random surfer clicking on

random links will have a 33% chance of

landing on each site. So each site has a

page rank of 0.33. But if B links to C

and A, then A must be most important. So

it acquires half of B's page rank, too.

It's a mathematically simple way to sort

the worth of web pages. So page rank can

crawl the internet fast, always

rebuilding its leaderboard so your

search for the Stanley Cup doesn't pull

up something irrelevant like the Toronto

Maple Leafs.

When Larry Pageige won a Maronei prize

for page rank, they said human access to

information hadn't taken such a quantum

leap since Gutenberg built his printing

press. And all Larry said was that he

was happy his company passed the

toothbrush test. That is Google built

something that people can use twice a

day that makes

people's lives better.

Oh no,

what ridiculous stupid machines who

builds these things? But no one foresaw

just how long this tooth touch would be.

5 trillion searches a day is twice a day

for every person on the planet. And that

mega data enables the most profitable

scam in history. Say you need some new

pedals for your little toy here. And the

first thing a company like Fortnite

would do is make an ad for your precious

anglets.

Somewhere on this ad is a transparent

one by one image called a spy pixel.

You'll never see it, but your browser

must still request it from the server

and in doing so share its IP. That's how

Google knows you've scrolled past the ad

side.

>> And nowadays it goes even deeper, Alice.

Pixels are a small piece of JavaScript

Google gets customers to install on

their own websites. Hit that inspect

network tab and you'll see them firing

off to google analytics.com. What you're

scrolling, when, for how long, on what

browser, reporting more than enough data

for Google to say when you go to forand

buy your trinkets, this is my customer.

They saw my ad, I earned my pay. That

type of advertising makes up 75% of

Google's billions. It's 98% of Meta's

revenue. What a doozy of a duopoly. And

I have no inherent problem with selling

the ad space between the titties on your

Instagram feed. Except it doesn't work

like that anymore. Nowadays, people

think in search queries. Google knows

your pedals are wearing out. They know

about the crank brothers shoes on your

feet. They know where you live. They

know you've been creeping that pedal

page you pedal file. They know you

bounced when you saw the looney 250

looney price tag. But they know you're a

55-year-old dentist who gets paid in one

week and they're guessing you'll be

back. So, here is the scan. Now,

sometime over the next few days, you'll

be watching a mountain biking video, and

you won't even notice the banner ad for

those pedals that you were planning to

buy.

But since your browser loaded the spy

pixel, Google gets credited with the

sale when you do.

The customer didn't discover a product

that they hadn't already chosen, and the

company didn't gain a customer that they

didn't already have. Google just

predicted who was about to buy, then

showed them an ad at the last minute.

It's the digital equivalent of handing

out flyers in the checkout line, then

claiming success when people pay for

their carts 2 minutes later.

Phew. That's how Google makes most of

their revenue. And that's a failing of

their own toothbrush test. Doesn't make

anyone's life better, just makes money.

We can prove this in a few ways. An

expensive option is to massively upscale

the spend on a campaign and watch the

conversions drop off a cliff, indicating

Google had false success, showing your

ad to people who were already predicted

to be in tomorrow's customer list, but

could not convert when forced to cold

call a larger group. The [ __ ] is that?

But let's put some real numbers on it

with, ironically, Google's own tool. Say

Montreal sells 50 helmets one day,

Ottawa sells 20. Over time, their causal

impact tool can learn to extrapolate

Ottawa's data to predict Montreal's. So,

when we run ads in Montreal and

purposely keep Ottawa dark, we can see

the difference the ads actually made. In

such a test, Google claimed to generate

4,74

sales. But subtract the predicted sales

from our fictitiously adless Montreal

and we get 160. meaning Google took

credit and got paid for 4,544

sales that would have happened anyway.

One final spooky proof is to run ghost

ads. Pay to show people empty boxes,

then watch as Google claims customer

acquisitions from that blank rectangle.

My buddy once accidentally promoted a

404 page that generated 73 sales. how

Google is using their mountain of data

to show ads to people who are already

about to buy.

To quote my anonymous

marketing guru, that's advertising as

inference, not influence. And if that

sounds like a subtle difference, the

half trillion dollars that it brings in

every year is not.

Of course, there are some real new

conversions mixed in with the preach to

choir, but Google and Meta's blackbox

attribution algorithms ain't going to

tell you which is which. And that's

precisely how it's possible to scam such

a large amount of money because the

victims are precisely the people who

would want to believe that it's all

good. What marketing manager is going to

look at a long list of advertised sales

and not go, "Damn, my campaign's working

great. I'm a genius." And what marketing

manager is going to spend a bunch of

company money just to show people a

blank ad and prove that they're not a

genius? Well, my buddy did,

and it made for an interesting expose,

even if it didn't make it any easier for

him to advertise the fact that Fort 9

now sells 45,000 mountain bike parts,

accessories, and apparel. Hope this

video helps you, buddy. Links for those

things are down below. Thanks very much

for watching.

stupid ridiculous things.

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Today that makes day.

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Yeah.

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