"No, they had one slightly clever idea slightly before everyone else, and ever since they've been hell bent on screwing as much cash as possible out of it whilst they can."
That's not true. Their algorithm, Back rub, and method of search was completely novel. True they were not the first search engine, but the underpinnings were unique which is why they came to dominate a saturated market. Their method of online ads sales was also unique. They churn out a ton of innovation... and give it way via open source. Hadoop was based on Google's GFS, TensorFlow is the ML standard... came from Google, Dremel, Kubernetes, Jupiter, Spanner, etc.... You would be hard pressed to come up with a more inventive company.
On "screwing cash", how much money have you paid Google in your life? Ballpark number.