It is, however, completely wrong to assume that this means that Google has no incentive to treat you well. It is not altruism that compels them to remove spam from search results.
Google needs many happy users to be able to offer an attractive product to its customers. They depend on people using them just as much as they depend on advertisers paying them money. Both sides of the market are important, advertisers and users. Google cannot just ignore one side.
Those who use Google to search don’t pay Google any money and they are, in that sense, no customers. You shouldn’t read much more into that word, though.
(Two sided markets and network effects are fascinating and relevant to so many discussions on HN. Wikipedia has a pretty good primer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market)
Google needs many happy users to be able to offer an attractive product to its customers. They depend on people using them just as much as they depend on advertisers paying them money. Both sides of the market are important, advertisers and users. Google cannot just ignore one side.
Those who use Google to search don’t pay Google any money and they are, in that sense, no customers. You shouldn’t read much more into that word, though.
(Two sided markets and network effects are fascinating and relevant to so many discussions on HN. Wikipedia has a pretty good primer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market)