Yes, it can. Where exactly are they going to go? Even the really few of us who care about it enough to stop using Google search, turning to duckduckgo, still need to go back to Google every once in a while, when DDG obviously doesn't cut it. The interwebs are filled with Google's advertising products, and the number of Gmail users who evangelically try to beat its interface into behaving well enough to be worth a fuck is almost outrageous.

We are still a good five or six years away from the point where Google would have to worry about alienating the users whose data they sell, and with the decreasing amount of Internet education most users get before starting to surf the web, the distance from that point is increasing. They thrive on the eternal September.