Google Business Model

Google's business goal is to provide the best and most efficient search engine possible. They try to find the most helpful websites to direct queries to and to put themselves in all the latest technological gismos. They claim their main focus is on the user and that they seek to make your search as quick, easy, and helpful as possible.
That was what I read on Google's actual philosophy. I also read something else someone wrote about Google's "product." They claimed that google's "product" is in fact the user because they "sell" their user's to their advertisers by conveniently placing ads relevant to what they see that you're searching for or suspect you are interested in. I also saw something throughly disturbing about google scanning your email to see what your interests are so that they can figure out what ads you'd be most susceptible to, but I don't really know if that's true or not.
Naturally Google has to have some way of supporting themselves, so it's only natural they would offer their site for advertising. And I think it is certainly admirable for them to want to do everything they can to make their search engine the best it can be. And if one is going to display ads, it is certainly sensible to try to display an ad related to what a person appears to be interested in. The odds of someone searching for a website about motorcycles being interested in an ad for coin collectors is rather unlikely after all. It's only logical to use people's interests to try to influence them to buy one thing or another, and I imagine advertising in this method is probably more effective than advertising on television or radio or billboards.
Overall I think Google's business model is likely to be very effective and that they can be a business and make money while being so diligent in endeavoring to provide a good service for people is very impressive.