[freetard]

> True, they haven't hit many home runs outside of search

Except for youtube which is #4 worldwide and blogger.com #7, not to mention their adsense ads that are all over the web. And don't forget buzz, that is building an open distributed social network over the internet. I think google is doing real fine against facebook.

[axod]

I was with you until you mentioned "buzz". I think the jury's out on that one.

[seldo]

I'd even say the jury has returned a verdict of "failed" already.

[johnfn]

You can never be too sure. After all, chrome floundered in market share for a while before it really developed. Google certainly isn't a company to just let something decent lie around.

[pt]

orkut anyone?

[samg]

Google purchased Youtube and Blogger after they had both hit big-time traction. I'd hardly credit either success to Google. And Buzz a home run? Really?

[idoh]

Both properties grew like crazy after joining Google. Doesn't Google get credit for excellent stewardship of the properties?

For example, compare delicious/flickr -> yahoo to youtube/blogger -> google.

[samg]

They certainly do and deserve credit for not completely screwing them up. But besides keeping them running, has Google really done much to further either success? Blogger has remained pretty stagnate for the last few years. Would anyone here (looking for a hosted blogging platform, to keep things fair) choose Blogger for their blog today? Google has paid the bills for Youtube, granted (anyone know if Youtube is turning a profit yet?), but Youtube's success seems more attributable to its early-branding rather than any Google help.

[idoh]

Just to take a small example with youtube, they've created an entirely new ad platform. Building out an ad platform at that scale is by no means easy - there's an ad server, BT, targeting, reporting, payments to youtube publishers, not to mention recruiting a sales team. And that's just one aspect of youtube that google's had a hand in.

[moultano]

From what I've heard, youtube may not have been able to survive infrastructurally if they hadn't been bought and had infrastructure to move to.