Why is Google the number one search engine?

I'm sure there are thousands of other reasons but none as compelling as this one single fact:

There are 19,835 employees in Google, out of which 14.8% works in General and Adminstrative, 10.7% in Operations, 37% in Sales & Marketing and a slightly ahead of equivalent, 37.5% in Research & Development.

Google does not have a physical product. It provides services. Therefore, for industries which provide services, it's high time they understand that equal investment in R&D is inevitable if you want to get somewhere, and somewhere important that is. Looking at how the advertising industry works, pray tell, how many percentage of the workforce is allocated for research? What, the planners?! And how much of the agency budget is spent back on investigation on their own industry as well as the clients? I don't have numbers but I'm pretty confident that a whopping number of agencies definitely have none.

To move forward, a new mindset is in order - Research and Experiment. If we are to lead consumers and clients in this business, we've got to be ahead of them in terms of both social and technological knowledge and experience. Hmm. That's gonna be hefty.