The Early History of Online Advertising

By: Raymond Hackney

Here is an illustrated look at the early days of Online Advertising. One thing not mentioned in the infographic that I found interesting in other research was that Google initially wanted to do a deal with Bill Gross but could not come to terms on a deal. They went ahead with Adwords and Gross went after them and they settled out of court.

A story on Tech Crunch from 2010 told another story:

The story begins in 1996 with an 18-year-old college dropout named Scott Banister, who came up with a simple but elegant concept that turned out to be one of the best business ideas in history.

This is the true story of the search business model — a concept that
John Battelle and other search historians have erroneously attributed to
Bill Gross
for Goto.com. Although Gross deserves the lion’s share of credit for
recognizing a good idea and more importantly for implementing it, the
credit for developing the idea itself belongs elsewhere. But first,
let’s recall the world of search in the late ‘90s.

Courtesy of Ad Push Up