[beagle3]

> Google bought their way into search by paying firefox and others who distributed the google toolbar.

Google already owned search when firefox finally had nontrivial market share. They did not "buy their way into search", the transformed the market with an excellent product (Google altavista, the undisputed king until Google came).

At some point, they started paying e.g. mozilla to maintain their position.

But they reached that position based on merit. (A rather uncommon event, unfortunately).