Google also had, realistically, no competition in the online ads business for most of that time. Microsoft tried so hard but never broke into that market. No other online ad company could even come close to google 2000-2010 in terms of scale, technical chops, etc.
It’s easy to have principals, it’s hard to live up to them. The first real competitor to Google’s online ads dominance was Facebook and has caused Google to completely shit the bed (from practices and policy, they’re obviously doing well money wise)
