Non-advertising projects get lots of attention, but below the surface is a hulking mass of engineers supporting new ad formats, new ad optimizations, accounting systems, analysis tools, ad targeters, advertiser support front-ends, etc.
Corollary: If you go to work for Google, the odds are that you will be writing code to support advertising.
(I could be wrong--maybe it's less than 50%. But it's a lot, and my guess is that your "vast majority" is a much less educated guess than mine is.)
If you're trying to say someone working on Bigtable, Spanner, or other infrastructure is "direct related to advertising", I disagree. That infrastructure benefits all Google products, not just ads.
If I add up FTEs for Cloud, Search, Maps, Android, Chrome, Apps, Photos, etc is a several times multiple of those reporting to Ads related VPs.
Most employees at Newspapers are writers working on stories (journalists), we don't say they are ad companies.
There's a difference between "doing tech" and what Google does that puts them in a whole other category like Microsoft, Apple, IBM, etc. Are you seriously trying to say that most companies "doing tech" are doing the equivalent of Chrome, Android, Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Search?
This is the kind of negative, pointless comment that the new HN policy warned about. It's regurgitating a meme that has been posted hundreds of times, it's designed to demean and dismiss the good work of thousands of engineers and researchers working on hard problems.