Since tax situation is usually very different for different people and in different tax jurisdictions, it would be safe to say that this is considered income before taxes.
1) Is not visa, you have to not need visa for Iceland to qualify
2) Is not long term, it's valid up to 180 days
On the other hand, they recognize remote workers which kind of fit somewhere in between tourists and people who come to work, which many other countries don't.
Try some MOOCs. There's "Python for everybody" specialization on Coursera, it's newbie-friendly but you get to build a little product that does something. IMO, that should be your first milestone - build something small that works and see how you feel about that. If you find it interesting, you can go for more courses and after some time you'll know where to go next, but if you're not really amused maybe you should give something else a try.
"Burke said he paid Google “a lot of money for a long time” for an “unlimited” cloud storage account."
I don't see how can this be seen as "taking advantage of a system".