I think the other problem is that search doesn't matter as much to anyone else. Yes, Microsoft made Bing, but Bing is essentially a side project for MS -- their crown jewels are Office and Windows, and everything in the company revolves around that. Just like everything MS does ultimately comes back to Office and/or Windows, everything Google does ultimately comes back to search. If a company with resources, like Amazon or Microsoft, made search a top-tier priority, they could take marketshare from the big G.

One potential move that would greatly assist Bing, for instance, would be for Microsoft to make Android phones and put Bing as the search provider instead of Google. They could team up with Amazon and use Amazon's app store. Instead of doing this, Microsoft released a totally separate platform. Why did they do that? Because Java is competition to C#. Who cares about C#? Microsoft cares, because C# (and Xbox, and...) is about keeping Windows the dominant platform for any and all software, because that's how you keep selling Windows licenses and keep Windows shipping on every PC sold. It's all about protecting their lock-in. If MS embraced Android, they may help Bing, but they'd be undermining the Windows lock-in strategy.

Every company comparable to Google has similar problems. DDG is noble but nowhere in the type of ballpark where they can realistically compete (for now).

That being said I make sure that DuckDuckGo is always one keypress away, I still haven't managed to make it to a full switch but I try and use it more and more.

There's nothing in the mission statement about making money...

If you mean Google has to make money to survive in the long term, then that's absolutely true, just as it's true for any other company (Microsoft, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo etc.)

I don't see any evidence that Google is more profit centric than any other company.

Paving the way to hell have always looked great from the outside, you know, because of all the good intentions put towards it.