> A project that on the surface surely must be a massive cost center for them that doesn't benefit their advertising arm one bit. No sir, made out of the goodness of their hearts and given away for free for nothing other than promoting the open web.

I don't think they ever claimed it was out of the goodness of their hearts. From the horse's mouth:

"Our business does well if people are using the Web a lot and are able to use it easily and quickly," Google co-founder Sergey Brin said.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/why-google-c...