What If Google Made Fintech

"They charge fees for almost everything, although they are not poor companies running on losses." Actually maybe that's how banks are not poor companies running on losses? It's not a secret that Google makes nearly 90% of revenues and 98% of profits from only one product, Google AdWords. 

Well, banks could certainly live out of client deposits without charging any unnecessary fees...if only the banks could optimise their processes.

Yes, Ads are the core revenue stream of Google today. Would it still be main contributing over 90% in 10 years from now? I doubt that.

Next to this, Google integrates advertising in its products like gmail. Hence, Google Ads are happening outside of the search engine itself as well.

Sorry but AFAIK every successful business that optimizes its processes does so to cut costs and increase profits, not to eliminate existing sources of revenues. Doing free service accelerates the race to the bottom and I'm glad banks aren't going down that path. I meant Google AdWords in the broadest sense of the term i.e. ads appearing outside Google SERP viz. AdSense ads appearing on other Alphabet properties like YouTube and GMail as well as on third party properties like Amazon, Flipkart, blogs, etc. Frankly, I doubt if Sergey Brin / Larry Page themselves know what percentage of their revenues will come from ads 10 years from now, so I won't bother hazarding a guess.

Well, I think it goes a bit further than that. Say the availability of previewing Domain Authority in search results is of a significant importance for me. Luckily there is a plugin available for Google Chrome that allows be to combine my favourite browser with an essential tool. If this plugin wasn't available, perhaps I'd have to use a browser made by MOZ (and probably there would be one)...hence google would get less data, less impressions, less income. That's what the banks don't get.

As for the costs and profits, banks are already losing their sectors. PayPal, TransferWise and many others are offering better and cheaper solutions..and the presence of bank fees is something that would result in lower volumes, hence profits. Is there anyone using a paid personal email account? Why would then anyone pay for having a bank account?

By the same token, Google should stop charging for its ads. Volumes will soar. So will profits. I'll save a big bundle I pay for Google Ads every month. But I don't live in that dream world. 

In the real world, Revenue = Rate * Volume. No matter how high Volume gets, if Rate = 0, Revenue = 0. Since Profit = Revenue - Costs, Profit = 0 or negative, as long as Revenue = 0. 

So, high volumes by itself does not generate profits.

Over the years, members of my family and I have opened scores of bank accounts in several countries including India, USA, UK, etc. We have never paid any fees for any of those accounts. If Google or someone else enters the market believing in a hypothetical world where all banks charge for a bank account, they won't last a day.

Google is a publisher. Things like impressions, data, matter to its core business model. Banks are in the deposit taking and lending business. Things like impressions, data don't matter to its core business model.

Banks earn interchange every time someone pays a merchant via PayPal via credit card or funds a PayPal account via credit card. ICYMI, TransferWise is increasingly executing cross-border transactions via traditional banking channel and paying fees to banks because it's increasingly unable to find matching transactions on either shore. Therefore, I fail to see how banks have lost anything to PayPal or TransferWise. On the contrary, the way I see it, banks are shedding customers, not losing customers.