Google isn't strictly in the "get eyeballs, show ads" business - their meteoric success has been due to ad brokering, not the showing of the ads themselves. In

Google isn't strictly in the "get eyeballs, show ads" business - their meteoric success has been due to ad brokering, not the showing of the ads themselves. In short, they show ads to other people's eyeballs - being the broker is a much, much stronger position than being the one who has to collect all the pageviews.