[mkolodny]

There are ways to keep the lights on without showing ads.

Example:

Offer a "premium" search experience. They could let people customize what types of results they'd like to see. When I'm searching for a software engineering question, I'd almost always prefer documentation, then code, then q&a, then blog posts. I'd also love to set which sites I'd prefer to see results from (mdn, Reddit, etc).

The issue is that ads would almost certainly make more money than other options. And, as a for-profit company, Google has a lot of pressure to do what makes them the most money. It would be tough for them to tell their investors, "we know we could make more money by showing ads, but we're not going to do that". Even if they could offer a better experience/product without ads.

Personally, and this is almost certainly a controversial opinion, I think the issue is with the for-profit company model. As soon as you give people equity, you're under a lot of pressure to do what makes the most money rather than what's best for the world. I'm curious what Google would look like if it was a money-making non-profit.