> I think it's pretty ludicrous that so many people are willing to let an advertising company basically re-write the way that every computer on the web

First, to call Google an advertising company makes no sense. It's a tech company. You don't call a newspaper an advertising company either.

Second, there were people involved in designing this, not just an anonymous corporation. You can actually see their names in the proposals. It's a good design, that's why it has been adopted.