Well, I saw nothing against it in the TOS I believe. Would it be fine to have a google clone site but the search bar is your google search (to get money) code?
I wish I could help you, but I really don't understand what do you mean by "google clone site". Maybe post the url so that we can have a look at your site and we can get a better picture.
What he mean is he is going to create a seach engine site with the same lay-out as google homepage but he is going to put his "google search code" in his search bar so that when people use the search bar, they will be directed to google - and he will earn from google search..
If you are going to put adsense on the page I think you will need some content. But you can have a search engine using Google's AdSense for search, That's what I started out doing when I made my search engine, but it seems to have evolved a bit Cheers James