Facebook, like Google before it, doesn’t need to have its revenue model figured out yet

I’m getting a little tired with Facebook-Google comparisons, but I’m going to point to this post anyway, because it does hit on an important point: nobody knows how Facebook will end up really making money, just like nobody knew how Google was going to make money in 1999.

Then again, back in 1999, even Google didn’t have the best business plan in the world – in fact, they didn’t have any at all, according to statements made by the Google founders back in the days. Here’s ZDNet news in June 1999 (my emphasis):

When asked how the company plans to make money, Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page would only say what they won’t do. They don’t want to become a portal. No content. And they want to avoid competing with other search engines to be the browser of choice for existing portals. In fact, Page said Google doesn’t have any real competitors at all, which may be why they don’t intend to do much marketing.

But even Internet companies, which are almost expected to lose gobs of money, need at least a revenue stream, don’t they?

“We have other ways of making money,” said Page. “You’ll see.”

As a quick aside, given how things really did turn out, how bad@ss is Larry Page for saying that?

But now, back to Facebook. Most comparisons with Google are completely invalid. They’re different products and at different stages, and at the moment, they’re in completely different leagues.

But, Google is a great example of how you can’t count someone out just because they haven’t found their working revenue model yet. For all we know, in two years Facebook won’t be using ads to make money at all. We don’t know.

It will be interesting to look back on this post in a few years. Either Facebook will be off the map, or this will seem as silly as the ZDNet article from 1999.

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