How auctions set ad prices
May 13th, 2008 | Published in Google Public Policy
Some people think that Google manually controls prices for the ads that appear on our site. But Google -- like all the major search engines -- actually uses auctions to price ads, meaning that prices are determined by advertisers. Check out our chief economist Hal Varian's explanation over on the Official Google Blog of why it would be impossible for Google to set all these prices by hand.