Saying Google is an innovative technology product company is like saying Michael Jordan is a good basketball player.  Google comes out with products at a dizzying pace.  So much so that you can find top ten lists of Google products that you’ve forgotten about.

But it’s worth mentioning that despite investing in all of those products, there’s only one that makes up the majority of Google’s share price: AdWords.

That’s not surprising considering the relentless growth of paid search advertising even during a challenging economy.  The latest estimates for search ad spending growth this year are 15-20%, a 3x improvement over last year.

One would think that in a down economy, more companies would be optimizing for solutions that aren’t pay-per-click, like Search Engine Optimization.  As popular as SEO has gotten, however, it’s revealing that the most prolific search engine in the world DOES NOT pay any attention at all to optimizing their own site but they DO use Adwords.

Ironically, this optimistic outlook for paid search is happening when overall ad spending is down and even digital ad spending is flat.  Paid search spending in particular is really the only bright spot.  Why?  There are lots of opinions on why paid search is garnering a larger share of marketing budgets but according to the folks at Razorfish: measurability, the opportunity for optimization, and the wisdom of the crowd are key.

So what does this mean for Google and other companies deriving the lion’s share of their revenue from paid search?  Let’s just say we’re betting on the blue part of the graph.