Google wants to sell us advertising. That’s why they exist.
For that to happen, they put us and our competitors on the same page and let us all slug it out (pay it out, actually) for prominence. They’ll even give us the weapons (keywords) and teach us how to fight.
They will - and this is the good part - gladly give us a $100 AdWords account. It’s literally a license for Google to print money.
AdWords accounts give us magic Google money to bid up the value of keywords we’ll be paying Google for in real money. Each time we bid up the value of a keyword, we’re slicing our own throat a little deeper.