Gam3r01 :
The 50 year analogy was one ad per second, nothing more, and not an automated process running in parallel. It was just meant to give a perspective on how many ads that is if, say, a real person had to sit there and do it by themselves.
Yeah, that's how I took it. They were merely trying to convey a sense of scale.
However, what I'm still not clear on, is whether these were 1.7 billion
unique ads, meaning each one is different. That number sounds quite high, but then I'm sure some ads are automatically generated in numerous variations.
On the other hand, if they were 1.7 billion postings of perhaps thousands or millions of unique ads, then it's rather disappointing and clearly meant to misrepresent the scope of Googles prior efforts.