[wartijn_]

They did a pretty good job in persuading people to use search, adsense, YouTube, Gmail, Maps and a bunch of other products. Singling out a few couple of the less successful ones to claim a trillion dollar company is “clumsy at persuading people to use their products” seems like a pretty bad take.

[roenxi]

You'll note that all the examples you're citing were released more than a decade ago (search wasn't even this century!). And YouTube was an acquisition. They were basically the work of a different Google to the one that is walking around now.

The stereotype of Google back then was very different. People would quote things like "don't be evil".

[fsociety]

The only products you listed which weren’t acquisitions are search and gmail. Search is exactly the problem Google was made to handle and Gmail.. well I don’t love gmail but it is a good enough product I guess?