Twenty-five years ago, Google unveiled Adwords, which pledged to enable advertisers “to quickly design a flexible program that best fits [their] online marketing goals and budget,” Google cofounder Larry Page said at the time.

The principle was simple. AdWords allowed advertisers to purchase individualized, affordable keyword-based advertising that appears alongside search results used by hundreds of millions of people every day.

That decision was a game changer for Google. Advertising now accounts for around three in every four dollars of revenue the company has made so far this year, growing 10% in the last year alone. The product, since renamed Google Ads, has powered the company to prosperity, cementing its position at the top of the search space.

But a quarter of a century on, arti

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