Hardly unethical. If academia could produce a search engine of equal quality but without ads, people would use it.
You may not like the ads, but they pay for the product. Which let's face it, is really quite good. There is probably no other software product I've been as loyal to for as long. Even linux, which is amazing, I haven't used for as long. I started out on Windows. I almost always find what I'm looking for on the first page of Google results, if it's to be found at all. That's remarkable when you think of how much information is out there.
You may not like the ads, but they pay for the product. Which let's face it, is really quite good. There is probably no other software product I've been as loyal to for as long. Even linux, which is amazing, I haven't used for as long. I started out on Windows. I almost always find what I'm looking for on the first page of Google results, if it's to be found at all. That's remarkable when you think of how much information is out there.