[TekMol]

I'm not sure it's the surveillance that makes Google earn so much. I would think the main reason is that search traffic is so valuable to advertisers.

[corv]

Not only web searches.

Tracking Google Maps journeys, YouTube, Google Analytics across most of the web, a major portion of global email communications, Hangouts, Google Drive, etc, the list goes on and on.

Immensely valuable data that is able to predict trends and behaviour of both businesses and people in many instances

[mudil]

Their whole business model is a targeting advertisement, and targeting comes from the snooping: what you do, what you eat, what you read, where you are.

[TekMol]

Not true. Their main business is auctioning off ads on their search result pages. That auction is mostly keyword-based and not interest-based.

[bitmapbrother]

I think you're confused. Google generates the majority of their revenue from ad targeting. Snooping and spying are performed by your government and paid for by your tax dollars.