Who's technical brilliance? Sergy and Brin's got them a better search engine, but wasn't it the AdWords idea that originated at Goto.com that got them to the Google they are today?
Adwords without Pagerank is useless. The pay per click and auction mechanisms for Adwords are innovative in a sense, but Adwords is not successful because of its technical implementation. Adwords are what people pay for in a literal sense, but the source of Google's money is their search implementation.
EDIT: At this point their brand is also a source of Google's money. Today you need both to compete in search.
EDIT: At this point their brand is also a source of Google's money. Today you need both to compete in search.