Google has done extremely well commercially. It's like asking how the New York Yankees could have done better in the late '90s. Any change, even a seemingly very positive change, is likely to change the extremely high but extremely unlikely trajectory. I mean, there's more ways to fail than to succeed.
As far as ethically . . . Google had the slogan "don't be evil." That's still preaching a negative. Maybe if they had used the analogy of a commercial radio station--respect the music, respect our listeners. Which in my view, very few stations do! They might have then had a meatier (?) role model, set of skills to better meet challenges.