You have a point. They waste much more than just the time for finding what you searched for: think about all the time you have to work to afford to buy junk, because you got manipulated by ads. And other people have to work to make the useless products. And to design the ads.

Everyone thinks they're too smart to fall for it, but companies wouldn't pay Google, if advertising didn't work. They conduct A/B tests and can get pretty good estimates on how much more people spend because of the ads. That amount is how much advertising is worth to them and it's how much we waste on them paying more for cheap or useless products. Again, products you would have bought anyway sooner or later don't show up in the A/B test calculation.

Companies spend over a trillion dollars on ads (all ads, not just Google). And from the above, we can estimate, that consumers waste about the same amount because of ads. That's enough to end Poverty, hunger and climate change and have money left.

And most ads don't lead to a purchase, but still waste your time even after watching it. By altering your sense of self worth, they make you waste your time thinking things like "I'm not good enough".