I note that none of those screenshots contain ads. Perhaps a Googler can enlighten us: do Google employees not get served ads? Or is the author of this blog just using adblock? Or are these images just fake mockups where they left out the ads to make them more aesthetically pleasing and clean looking for PR purposes?
I just did every search (Taj Mahal, Marie Curie, Matt Groening) they did on my unaltered Firefox/Windows 7 install while logged in, am certainly not a Google employee, and got no ads. Also didn't get the Knowledge Base yet, if that is a factor. Famous locations/people searches don't seem to be stuffed with ads typically. I'd imagine more research style searches having ads would be a bad experience for both the user and advertiser compared to stuff like "cheap flights" which does have an amazing clutter of ads. And of course, picking research style searches presents the idea better. Lack of ads is a nice bonus.
Google search ads are really not in the same business as most traditional advertising. Traditional advertising wants to create desire, and inform people. You take a lot of people and show then things they might be interested in, and hope some of them spend money. What Google search ads do is trafficking intent. Think queries like "cheap hotels in Florida", which clearly communicate that the customer is willing to spend money.
They find customers who want something specific, businesses who will sell them that, and make them meet. And then give the people who sell very good analytics that show exactly how much value they are getting, so they can bid up each other for the ads until Google captures almost all the value. During the housing boom, some mortgage-related keywords climbed into mid three figures. That is, each and every time someone searched the matching keywords and clicked on an ad, several hundred dollars changed hands.
Yes, we still get ads. It wouldn't really be dogfooding if we didn't. I guess devs working in search could turn them off if they wanted, or as you say maybe they just have adblock installed :)
