This might be a case few years ago, but google is clearly trying to diversify its business with the high speed internet, self-driving cars, robotics. It's hard to justify these investments for the sake of ads.
High Speed Internet --> To have more data & serve you more ads throughout your whole internet experience (not just google).
Cars --> Oh, have more time while you're not driving? Spend it on your tablet / computer / device & see more ads.
Robotics --> Time freed up around the house? Spend more time online. Need to have your robot run errands for you? Approve these coupon offers at nearby grocery stores & have your robot pick them up.
Glass --> Like the outfit that person is wearing? Here's a coupon to buy it right now.
Google is an ad company. They have cool tech - but they it comes back to ads.
About self driving cars: I just want to know if you gave serious consideration to the idea of licensing the technology, and making piles of cash that way? If you did, then I assume you concluded that the advertisement possibility is an even bigger revenue source? Or you don't think that, but you believe that google has a company wide blind spot for that solution? I don't want to put words in your mouth, just want to understand deeper your reasoning.
So, could you please elaborate on why do you think self driving cars will be monetized through ads?
They invested 258 million into Uber[1]. I doubt Google . Google's mission is to "organize the world's information." Given that's their MO, once they've figured out the textual information of the web, they're moving to mapping the world & taking typically "offline" data - online.
With a bunch of driverless cars roaming the streets - they could be collecting all sorts of contextual data on people / locations / businesses that I imagine many, many people would be willing to pay for. They might not be ads in the same way you think about typical "search" ads, but they're still ads nonetheless.
Google doesn't tend to like to build actual "paid" services. Rather they create free services that draw in people / eyeballs & use that information to push their index of information even further.
Or, you know, they can just license the technology to literally every automotive company in the world, for tens (hundreds?) of billions of dollars of recurring annual revenue.
This is technology that is only possible through their insane lead in all the work on Google Street View. It will take years or decades for people to catch up. Then again, there is only one Google, so perhaps nobody ever will. They have all the PhDs and the patents. They have all the ground-level data about every nook and cranny on American roadways and beyond, and a system in place that keeps this up-to-date. They have a huge economic moat on this. Who else can do this? It's a $1t+ projected future cash flow imho. You think they really give a shit about the secondary increase in advertising revenue from people surfing their web in the car, enough to give the golden goose away for free?
What you say sounds clever but really it's pretty simple: Google will have a product that everyone wants, a product that will provide a massive ROI even at a high price, and nobody else will be able to duplicate it for a very long time, if ever. No need for higher dimensional chess here. If they pull it off it will eclipse anything you or I have lived through in terms of upside for a single company.
I think that Google DNA is against making money out of licensing consumer software. They give out everything for free, they release lots of open source libraries, they even released the most important mobile operating system in the world for free, giving it out for free so that other companies can make companies selling mobiles. When they were forced to get into hardware with the Nexus line, they decided not to make a profit selling them, so that people can benefit from cheap top-tier phones.
Lots of people think of Google has some kind of hero of free software and free services for consumers and I think it kinds of match their DNA and their mission. They did started monetizing the B2B/power users services more aggressively (Google Apps doesn't have a free version anymore, Google Drive space raised three times prices now, GAE got lots more expensive, etc.), but consumer market is where scale is.
They want to organize the world information and making it freely and easily accessible. My feeling is that they won't patent and license driverless cars exactly for this reason. I think the business model they will choose for Google Glass will tell us more about this.
I think this is just semantics. If Google's technology is powering my self-driving Honda Civic, someone has to pay for it. The hardware, the software, the service, all three of those are going to cost money. Google is not going to give away the hardware, someone will buy that, but that's not where the money is. They might give away/open source some of the software, that's irrelevant.
The big question is if the live navigation and driving service is going to be like Google Maps or Google Apps.
I don't think the division between paid vs ads has anything to do with consumer vs business. It has to do with if someone will pay for it, plain and simple, or if they have to monetize it through advertising (directly or downstream.) Android they had no choice and were willing to do anything to ensure they didn't miss the smartphone train. Here, they have all the leverage and no competition.
I'm pretty sure you'll see auto manufacturers paying for the service in a license-like fashion to put it in all their cars or consumers will pay directly for the service. I don't think anyone expects their car to drive itself around for free, and will be willing to pay for it, just like they don't expect free internet service and pay google for Google Fiber. I said "licensing" but what I meant really is "pay for the service directly."
edit: Oh, and even if it turns out consumers get a free ride (literally :)) you're still looking at absurd revenue from all the commercial entities that will have a need for this technology, both traditional ones (shippers, commercial transportation) and new ones we haven't thought of yet that become possible once the tech is available, like car-sharing services or micro-shipping. Google certainly isn't going to let them use it for free.
