Are Search Engines a kind of Public Service?

Long time before i started doing business online i thought like many people still do that Search engines were a kind of public service when they're really business like any other.

The ultimate goal of online entrepreneurs is to pull in lots of traffic to their websites.You will agree with me that any business whether on or off line without traffic (or potential customers) that business is doomed to fail.Lets examine the business model of a typical online business.

-A typical online business will use free or paid advertisements and other ways including offering free gifts to pull in lots of traffic.
-When these traffic lands on the site they are presented with a sales copy.What this sales copy does is let these traffic to better understand what the site is offering.
-It is only after that these leads will decide to or not to buy in on what the site is offering.When they do buy in $-ka-ching the site makes money.

So now what am i getting at ?Well it is in this same way the search engines do operate though slightly different.Lets look at the business model of search engines for a while.

-The search engines offers a free forum were any one can expose their information, product or services to the entire world.It also offers a free place were people can search for almost every thing specifically ranging from information ,products to services online.
-As people are being attracted by the free information the search engine provide they are being presented not with a sales copy as a typical online business will do ,but with the search results they are looking for.Now this search result usually contains a mixture of two types of listings.

• Natural or "organic"listings:These are sites containing information that are relevant to the search being performed(how the search engines decide if a site is relevant is a whole topic on its own)

• Paid or "Sponsored"listings:These are sites whose owners have paid to get listed in top results for specific search terms.

This is were it gets interesting when a searcher clicks on any of the sponsored listing,the site's owner pays the search engine for driving traffic to their site and the search engines $$-ka-ching makes money.

To conclude Google ,Yahoo,windows live search (formerly known as MSN search),Ask.com and all the others are businesses just like any online business.These search engines generate the greatest amount of their income from advertising fees.Actually 99% of Google's revenue, for example,comes from advertising.