There were ads on google.com since at least 2000[1]. Chrome wasn't announced until 2008. Disclosure: I work at Google but not on ads or Chrome.

[1] https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2000/10/google-launches-sel...

I believe they meant on https://google.com (the home page)

Oh, I didn't think of that. But I don't think that's really true either. There seem to be ads on the homepage before Chrome:

Google News: https://web.archive.org/web/20021001073516/http://www.google...

Google Calendar: https://web.archive.org/web/20060831050142/http://www.google...

For comparison, Chrome: https://web.archive.org/web/20080904192205/http://www.google...

Now admittedly the Chrome one is a bit flashier. Although I haven't exhaustively gone through every homepage variant before Chrome, so it's possible there was something as flashy before Chrome as well.

Ah, either the author of the article I'm dimly remembering was mistaken, or, much more likely, they correctly inserted some caveat that made the claim true, and the precise caveat was just lost to my faulty memory and the mists of time. I didn't bother trying to check the Wayback Machine because, for some reason, I was convinced that Google would have requested that the home page not be crawled; thank you for doing it!

Yes, thank you, you are right!