CNET Blog on the counter-culture of Google - stickiness is not the key; "Google is probably the largest online firm in the world that does as much as it can to get you off its pages"-is a nice read, but neglects one point: income.
With AdWords Google is interested in having you click on their own links and hence onto paid journeys. And with AdSense on a lot of those other pages, driving additional traffic onto (for Google) freely produced content makes a lot of sense.
So yes, they are open at the core and offer up API's and a broad, free selection of services for you to pick and choose - but they can afford to because a lot of what you do (including reading and writing this post) happens in their sphere of influence and income - ad revenues from own sites stood at 10.7 with network clocking up 5.8 for 2007 (unaudited)
