> These don't bring in revenue all by themselves
Thus they're not eggs at all, either golden or otherwise
> but they bring users to look at ads which is where they make all their money
Ad sales is their golden egg. Practically everything else is an egg truck to sell that one thing.
They're absolutely golden eggs, they just don't bring in revenue directly the way other products do.
Ads by themselves aren't a golden egg. Users don't want to look at ads, and certainly aren't going to pay for them. That's why they came up with those other products, to sell ads to advertisers.
It's just like newspapers: historically successful papers like the NYT didn't get rich by doing great journalism and selling papers to people, they got rich selling ads, with the journalism being a way to get people to subscribe to the paper.
> but they bring users to look at ads which is where they make all their money Ad sales is their golden egg. Practically everything else is an egg truck to sell that one thing.