in 1998, google (er, alphabet) got its initial round of $100,000. You&#x27;re not <i>wrong</i> but things in 1998 were weird. it wasn&#x27;t clear that the internet should or would be commercial at all. 1998 was a big bubble, because we didn&#x27;t know, at all, how the internet should work. c10k wasn&#x27;t met yet. Parents (not grandparents) thought the internet was scary.<p>Maybe big G (er alphabet) is indeed cannabalizing it&#x27;s own resources to juice adsense revenue. It&#x27;s different than the late 90&#x27;s though. For example pets.com, or moo.com. There are ideas that were tried that make money now. In the beginning it was just <i>weird</i>. all sorts of crazy stuff was tried.