Not really. Google is an advertising company now. When they started, they had no idea that's what they would become. Search is being leveraged for eyeballs to sell advertising space.

Google still does search, but it's business has nothing to do with search directly.

That's like saying that Walmart's business is cash registers.

If I could aquire either Google's search business, or their ad business, I would take search, no question. The ad part could be rebuilt on search, but the opposite is not true.

Search isn't a business. It's just a technology they developed. If Google hadn't found their advertising business, they would have failed.

You don't want Google's search technology because it will make you money. You want it because it has brand value and lots and lots of users that you want to leverage to make money using some other business.

Walmart's business is selling merchandise. The fact that they have to be experts at building construction so they can make stores to sell merchandise is just as secondary as Google's search business.

Would you rather have Walmart or their real estate?

It's more like saying NBC is an advertising company. No, they create content and sell ads beside it. Google gives us great search results and sells ads beside them.

And 1/3rd of their revenue comes from the Content Network, which has little if anything to do with search per se. (Realistically speaking the Content Network is a second bite at the apple from someone coming off a search result to a page which doesn't address their need, but it is in approximately no one's interest to admit that.)

Search eyeballs are the most valuable eyeballs on the internet. You know what people want, you can show ads for related things. Without search, Google would just be another ad network.

It's business has nothing to do with search directly? I can only assume you are being semantically pedantic here and using "business" to mean literally making money by selling a product. But even then I disagree with you. Yes they make 97% of revenue from selling ad-space next to search results. But without the search results that ad-space is (nearly) worthless. So how can you say Google's business has nothing to do with search directly?

I agree. Search is how Google builds its product, which is advertising. It's their competitive advantage. Because they have the best audience (targeted, biggest, etc.), they can use that to sell their advertising. By this measure, their product is superior to others, since they have put a lot of time into developing and refining their 'product' of advertising impressions, via the input of search traffic.

The company has an advantage, and it's using it to help sell something. Of course if they didn't have adwords, I'm sure Google could have found other ways to make money from their search.