Did those engineers tell you that people enjoyed looking at ads, or did they tell you that people prefer looking at ads that are relevant to their search, when they made that search with commercial intent?

I have never heard anyone claim the first (Mind you, I don't go out of my way to ask people to say incredibly stupid things), but I have frequently heard the second statement getting misrepresented as the first. [1][2]

And there's also an entire canyon of statements on the spectrum[3] between the two, many of which I have heard.

[1] Mostly by engineers on, ah, this website.

[2] It's rather easy to make such a misrepresentation, just do a direct quote that drops everything after the word 'ads'.

[3] 'People prefer looking at ads[2] over paying', 'People prefer looking at X ads[2] over Y ads', etc, etc, etc.