[asadotzler]

365 days a year for several years Google has had a Chrome banner ad on www.google.com showing to Firefox users. That page is the most lucrative property on the web in terms of eyeballs, so take your most outrageous ad rate you can find and do the math. It's billions per year worth of advertising.

[SquareWheel]

It's also completely free for Google to advertise on their own website.

[valarauca1]

Yes but that doesn't mean the economic value is non-existent.

Theoretically Google could sell that space. They trade this potential profit to promote their own product, at a loss, of how ever much that space could be sold for. This is like economics 202, opportunity cost.

[MichaelGG]

It's not that simple. It's easy enough to claim that showing a Chrome ad benefits users and helps Google's brand. Showing third party ads hurts Google's brand and overall value.

[valarauca1]

Only if the 3rd party project is subpar. largely chrome is a 3rd party project from the eyes of search. I'm pretty sure there isn't a massive overlap between search and chrome developers at google.