[tylerl]

Hold on. Google doesn't earn even a penny when you visit their site, find your answer on the search results page, and then leave. That user behavior COSTS Google money, it doesn't earn anything.

If they were trying to monetize you they'd show you an ad that links to your answer and take a profit on the click. Directly giving the user the answer they want is great for the user, but guarantees that Google won't earn any revenue.

So why does Google do it? Simple: because their competitors do. That's the free market for you. Google didn't start that feature, another competitor did; Microsoft made it their primary differentiating feature in fact (remember the "bing and decide" ads?). Google had to adopt the same behavior or lose their customers.

So no, don't blame Google, blame capitalism. This is precisely the kind of feature that you wouldn't get if Google was able to behave as a monopoly.