It's really not that simple with google, I think. I truly can't imagine that a company with the size, reach, and leadership of google has the unambitious and unsexy ultimate goal of selling more ads.

Sure, it's one of the larger objectives of the company simply because it's their big money maker, but I think it would be phenomenally short-sighted of the decision makers at google to focus and rely on ads long-term.

I don't think the decision makers in the company spend their time thinking up ways to sell ads. Considering the massive amount of information and power they have, there must be more to it.

In the end I think it's really still what they said in their mission statement: "Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Sure, their own survival is an 'automatic' goal, and ads serve that purpose. And sure, it seems that ideologically google doesn't care about privacy too much (which makes sense if you want to organize the world's information). And those are all reasons to be critical of google's operations.

Acquiring Nest seems to have no benefit at all in the context of ads; I can't think of any way to shoehorn ads into a thermostat in any effective way.

Rather, they are now getting useful information on people's behavior in their house, not to mention a team that has made a successful real product. That acquisition does not make sense in light of ads, but it does in light of google's goals, just as their mapping, street view, and glass serve this same purpose: more information to use in a myriad of (profitable) ways.

They see you're up when most people are asleep, assume you work night shifts, and then advertise sleep aids and the local 24 hour gym.

There's very little personal info that's not valuable to someone, somewhere.

I would throw them off scent by boosting the heating at night and sleeping with the lights on.