I completely understand that. My point was that Google has to keep searchers happy or they have no product to sell advertisers. In that sense, the searcher is a

I completely understand that. My point was that Google has to keep searchers happy or they have no product to sell advertisers. In that sense, the searcher is a 'customer' (you may like 'user' better) that Google needs to keep happy in order to maintain its product and keep it's real customers (advertisers). That said, the greatest search engine in the world isn't that great if no one uses it. Search volume (and advertising platform quality) is what drives advertisers to Google. If their results suck, users will use something else and lose the product that Google needs to be able to sell to its customers. (You can say the same thing about the rest of their products as it is all about collecting peripheral demographic information that allows advertisers to directly target them on the content network).