Yes this is the most insane thing about GOOG to me. Yes, search is basically monopoly moat of recurring growing revenue. On the other hand, they've spent not a decade, but about 25 years betting this would remain the case!

I've met a lot of people who work at GOOG, and yet none of them could explain to me how the thing they work on makes any money for GOOG. In fact, most went out of their way to volunteer to me that they only work on R&D/moonshot/non-revenue generating activities.. proudly. Quite a large subset of them showed almost an embarrassment of the single revenue stream (tricking old people to click on Pharma ads instead of genuine search results), and actively distanced themselves from it as some sort of moral shield.

It is amazing to have that many smart people working for that long and not bother to find some other ways to make money. Just complete lack of focus.