More on the Google Model

One Google revenue source is those unintrusive text ads. Google Search has them, Google Mail has them, Google Groups has them. If we build an application which attracts enough eye balls, can we possibly sustain ourselves by AdSense revenues alone? How great a following do we need to get to generate $.3M a year to support 2 people, or $.5M a year for 3 people? If this is possible, we can build a truely (well, mostly) virtual company. We just rent dedicated servers from a hosting company at $50/month/machine and install software there. We don't need to own and operate a data center. We grow the number of dedicated servers with the customer base. Or we sell the software and support as a packaged product. The former seems a lot easier.