I wondered how long it would be after Google went public that we’d start to see the flashing, annoying image ads on their site. It appears that we will not be long to wait: I read this morning in the NYT (free reg req) that Google will start selling image style ads to appear on it’s downstream customer’s sites (like NYT). The change will not affect google.com (the search engine), at least not at this time. It’s not clear how folks who have included the generally inoffensive text ads on their site will feel about the change, but it’s pretty clear that Google’s investors are more concerned with profits than remaining inoffensive.I’ve been a Google fan for years. I thought the whole concept of a bunch of really smart guys (and gals?) sitting around coding new ways to search the web was cool. It also served a vital function: The search engines before Google sucked. AltaVista, Lycos, even Yahoo were piss poor at finding things that were even part-ways related to what I had typed in, but Google seemed actually to have worked. Then when they bought out the usenet archive - you had no choice but to use Google - most of the answers to your computer related questions were in that archive.

I was both excited for Google and saddened for myself when they went public because I saw it as the beginning of the end. Sure, Google may succeed and get even more powerful than Microsoft someday - but that spark of coolness that was Google when I first found them will be long dead (at least for me).