Google's objective? Scrap/index everyone else's websites, files, movies, etc... Store those websites/info in their databases Use those stored websites/info to make money from visitors (adsense, adwords, etc.) Pretty simple. And it works. After that they'll continue to buy out smaller competitors in different web oriented fields (such as Youtube) or anyone that does something new and cool on the web. Eventually they'll get fat, lazy, and arrogant. Someone younger and hungrier will come along and do everything better. And then google will either fold or they'll get hungry again.
Google is just the Microsoft's monopoly-like of the 21st. century so everything is reduced to money and power.
For the answer to what Google's plan is, see this link: http://masterplanthemovie.com/ be afraid.. be very afraid...
Yeah, and let us hope it stays that way. It would be really disappointing if they start charging for everything just like Microsoft.
The next step from G is to buy all the mental health hospitals worldwide where to cure all the webmasters with nervous breakdown because of pagerank and SERP ...... Aha! This one wont be a free service .....
Go look at Googles NET profits for the past few years and see if their income is big enough to cover all that expenditure!! If you're not bothered.... quick answer YES. they are well able to cover all those costs. And as explained above the majority of those free services are not being run at a loss at all as they make a handsome profit from placing little ads here and there for all the millions of users that may wish to click on them.
Google does business as business should be done. It is increasingly successful in providing its customers what they want - less spammy search results, services like Gmail, Picasa, and many others. And the customers pour in (billions) And then Google caters to another group of customers, businesspersons who want to sell something to these billions. And AdWords and AdSense puts the marketing messages just in front of those who are searching for something related to each product or service advertised. And sales pour in. Bringing business customers (in millions, if not yet in billions). Excellent business. By the way, do you remember the days before AdSense? Were you able to make any money through affiliate programs where the merchant insisted that someone clicking through your link buy "then and there" for you to get any commission for the clickthrough? Were you happier then than with AdSense? Unfortunately, the black hats entered the AdSense scene also, causing advertisers increasingly opt out of showing their ads on AdSense sites, and bringing our incomes crashing down...
Actually i think stockholders are happy with google. Btw, that is where they get the money for the free services which they provide. By stock. And they have quite a few sources of revenue. 1)Adwords, very big source. 2)Institutional Search, like Google Mini etc 3)Google Earth 4)Google Checkout, Paypal's new competitor. There probably are more. With it's free services, like google analytics or gmail. Well gmail it makes up by the adword ads which run on gmail. Analytics, it sees trends, can monitor browsing behaviour, can see the depth of search terms, for its competitors as well. So even though analytics is free for you, it is also a tool of gathering information for google.
I heard of Google Mini before, but I thought that was still in Beta Phase. What you have said is true, but somehow I cannot tie-it-up with the over luxurious working environment they have in Google. Well, it may not be that "over luxurious" but compared to Microsoft (who's monitizing every product & services they have), Google still offers a very good environment for their workers. And that must cost them a relatively high Operational Cost.