Annonsfinansierade sökmotorer kommer inte att leverera de bästa sökresultaten eftersom resultaten kommer att vinklas för att gynna annonsörerna, skrev Googles grundare Page och Brin i sin sedermera berömda uppsats “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine” (1998). På den tiden önskade de sig en akademisk sökmotor:

The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. […] we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers. […] we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm.

Från stevenpoole.net. Idag drar Google in 29 miljarder dollar från annonser.