A product is anything that can be offered to a market that might satisfy a want or need. That nobody actually pulls out their checkbook and pays for a Google search doesn't mean it's not a product and that there's not a market for search.
I would guess that's not the common perception.
Sure there are secondary economic effects and markets that complicate the picture. But the basic business model of a television network isn't all that different than a regular company that sells their products directly.
Programming is their product, and customers buy it by paying attention (or to netflix, hulu, comcast, etc more directly). Attention is the currency, and ads let them exchange attention for USD.
To be fair, if you're an advertiser, then the product is eyeballs. But if you're a pair of eyeballs, then the product is the content. They're not mutually exclusive. Same with google. If you're a searcher, then the product is results. If you're an advertiser, then the product is relevant searchers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader
Search is sold at $0, to drive customers into the Store where they can see the real product.
Search, Maps, Mail, Android are given away free as their competitive strategy of generating huge volume of traffic.
Google's business model is to charge their customers the possibility to redirect some of that traffic. And because advertising is speculative they can reach high profit ceilings.
It's an old-school dot-com point of view. Own eye balls, monetize clicks.
Facebook went and ate Google's lunch by following their playbook and improved upon it by focusing their product around SOCIAL ACTIONS.
Facebook produces huge volumes of interactions. Every like, every heart, every comment, every follow. By the time Google got around moving the battleship they've already lost.
You want to be the next big thing?
What is that one thing everyone does all the time? Catch that.
Granted I don't hand cash over, but the user is still paying if you really want to stick with "products are paid for" argument
Yeah, all of that is true, but it misses the point entirely. The product that is 100% responsible for people going to the movie theater is movies. The product that drives everyone to Google is search. The fact that the revenue isn't directly related to the product doesn't make the product not the product.
That is exactly what makes it a product.
Product - Definition - an article or substance that is manufactured or refined for sale. e.g."dairy products"
In this case, the product refined for sale is the users.