> Google has been losing margin (hence profitability) in its search advertising business that powers everything it does fairly rapidly over the last 6 years. They have kept revenue/cash flow going/improving over that same period by putting more and more ads on their properties, dumping things which aren't making money, and trying really hard to push many of the moonshot projects into profitability.

Google is trying to pull off a Saudi Arabia: make as much profit as they can and pour said profits into R&D (tourism) so that when the time comes and people are not interested as much as now in AdWords (oil), the "moonshot" investments will have unlocked new sectors where profit can be made.