edit: i do believe they make a bit of money with youtube now, but it is still advertising. they haven't successfully SOLD anything to date.
I actually think lots of them make money -- over $5 billion in non-advertising revenue in 2013 [1]-- its just they are dwarfed by the scale of the revenue from search advertising ($50 billion in 2013.)
> they haven't successfully SOLD anything to date.
If they haven't sold anything but advertising, they must have just conjured that $5 billion in non-advertising revenue (and that total, and the proportion of non-advertising revenue to total revenue -- has been growing every year) in 2013 out of thin air. Which, you know, would be even more impressive than selling stuff.
They have not really had a successful product outside of advertising. Chromecast is probably the closest thing to a success out of all the other things they do. Seeing as how they don't have a single business line over a billion, I'd consider all of them hobbies at this point for a company the size of google.
Apple TV is a > 1 billion product now, and it is absolutely a hobby for Apple. Yet they have 4 different product lines that are huge businesses. Microsoft has a lot of huge business lines. Google has advertising and a bunch of hobbies. Hopefully at some point they turn into something. I'm specifically rooting for Fiber. But that doesn't mean it's true right now. It's just not.
It's not like deriving income from advertising is a strange way to do business.
At least Google is a bit more diverse with how they spend their money.