Google is just AltaVista with a slightly better algorithm. It wasn't the first search engine nor the first to offer ads on search or on the web. It just won the market and it was just as inevitable as Uber is. I even know a guy who was analyzing backlinks to rank search results before Google's PageRank paper.

I do not know the context of Ford.

That's far from true. Did you actually use pre-Google search engines? Google was a huge step forward in user experience. And I think they achieved that through significant innovation not just in algorithms, but in using commodity hardware and ops innovations to greatly increase the amount of computation they could use for a given search. And they didn't just have one clever idea; they built an organization that could keep having and applying clever ideas.

But it was also innovative in business terms. Search at the time was monetized like media properties: running a lot of ads that were at best tangential to what users were doing. They instead recognized that a lot of search wasn't great for monetization, but some of it -- where users were looking for something that could be purchased -- was very valuable. So instead of banner ads and all that nonsense, the ended up with AdWords. And instead of selling it via media sales execs, they made a self-serve bidding platform.

If Google had just had a slightly better algorithm, any of the better funded players could have taken them down. But Microsoft has been trying for years to break in and Google still has 90% of the market.

Goto.com did keyword ads well before Google. I think you are just forgetting history to make Google seem super unique.