As we're all aware by now, Google is an advertising company (with a heap of technology, but it's still a company which primarily sells advertising).
It's a bit late.
i skipped the part during installation where it says to enter a key. after install, it says windows is activated, no watermark, no countdown. i don't use it, though. i just don't trust free shit anymore.
https://martechtoday.com/google-posts-31-1b-in-total-revenue...
The one thing coming to mind which is not designed to boost advertising is their Pixel line (after they killed the rest of their hardware, of course) but even that is not as much of a standalone activity as it is a way to effectively steer the future of the Android ecosystem.
Ask yourself this: Which Google products or services would have justification as standalone P&L units, without collecting user data and sending it to the mothership? Not too many.
Cloud
X
Waymo
Play (the non-admob parts: app hosting/monetization, licensed content providing (music, movies/tv).
ChromeOS / Classroom
The entire Hardware division (which now includes Nest)
An awful lot of the Geo/Maps org is oriented away from direct advertising.
FWIW, you didn't ask, and my answer didn't include, other significant pieces of Google investment that are not remotely ad driven, like Deepmind & the entire RMI (Research & Machine Intelligence) organizations.
What I am trying to say: The whole online advertising business would not be that creepy if Google and Facebook wouldn't compete on who can track more out of the web users. The reason why we call them an advertising company, is that their core actions are driven by their advertising business. Otherwise, you would consider calling them a search company ;-)
This is what people said about Google too a few years back.
The reality is: Everything they're doing is designed to increase the company value for their shareholders.
That's not exactly true. Both companies have shown that they _will_ switch to selling something different when they believe they can make more money that way.
Also, both these companies spy on you while using their products, and both sell that data to their advertisers. It's not just Google.
You should use both their products as you want, when they help you. My point is mainly not to trust that the company behind the developer products is some kind of a good actor. They will sell you out when it fits them.
Also while MS is good to integrate third party open source projects, it also fails at the same time to address some core concerns of developpers from its own platform. For years people have wanted a portable UI framework for .net but the idea is always dismissed by the higher management. So, I think Microsoft is actually a developer-second, hype-first company.