Every source on the history of Google seems to implicate imply that their growth and development went:

Using their university resources -> surviving off of investor money -> starting monetization with targeted ads and raking in money

So it seems they had a phase of cornering their market with both public resources and off risky investments, then capitalised on having that exclusive appeal. Seems all too familiar, considering every damn tech startup under the sun now seems to go “trick investors or public funds” -> “corner market” -> “enshittifcation”

If someone else has some better info - go ahead and correct me, but there seems to be no mention of monetisation of Google before their targeted ad rollout.