your comments remind me of some related, potential factors. I was at Google in the early aughts... definitely had some mega futuristics visions (including later with moonshot).

But their CFO (excellent, loved by everyone) had major traditional telco background, so GoogleFi was natural idea, despite it's limited market traction. And you are right -- Google dominant mindset was "ad supported" everything.

Separately, Musk of course was physics major. Google 99% CS. So mindsets and ideas vary (with plenty of overlap too)