[beatle]

Producing the best thing we possibly can for users is our paramount thing. I think we have demonstrated that over a very long period of time with a whole variety of different issues we’ve faced around the world.

Hilarious. Lately, Google's wannabe products/services are knee-jerk reactions to existing products. Google is driven by envy, not by the desire to innovate or create a better product or service.

Android = iOS

Android tablets/ICS = iPad

Motorola Acquisition = iOS

Google+ = Facebook

Google Offers = Groupon

Google Places/Hotpot = Yelp

Chrome = IE/Firefox

Google Docs = MS Office

so on...

[Zikes]

Android was purchased by Google two years prior to the release of iOS [1][2]

Tablets are the natural progression of mobile platforms, and existed prior to the iPad.

The massive contention about Android fragmentation and update/upgrade paths has steadily grown to the point that controlling an additional choke point in that process could significantly improve the ecosystem. By purchasing Motorola and operating it separately they can produce phones with shorter wait times between Android version releases and updates, and set precedents for other manufacturers to follow.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a myriad of other platforms have proven that social is a huge market. Google+ was late to the party, but they would be stupid to ignore it altogether.

Google Offers is a natural tie-in with a mobile payments platform (Google Wallet), which they were essentially first to market with in the US despite having not yet gained significant traction.

I'm not very familiar with the Google Places, Hotpot, or Yelp services, but it seems like a natural tie-in with their existing Maps service. And sure, MapQuest was around first, but it still is, and I don't know anybody that prefers it to Google Maps.

Chrome may seem "me too" at the moment, but when it first released it was a pretty big deal. They proved that browsers could be minimal and functional, and as they said themselves it only made sense for them to contribute to the web at all points, from server to client.

Google Docs took Office products into a completely new space, one which Microsoft is now having a knee-jerk reaction to with their Office 365 platform.

On top of that, there's plenty of originality to be had still. Their self-driving cars project is really taking off, just a few short years ago nobody would ever have dreamed it would be possible to have a street-level view of nearly every road in the US (and tons of other countries now), their single account/sync structure is undoubtedly the inspiration for iOS's recent iCloud service, and they're in the process of revolutionizing internet connectivity itself right now with end-to-end fiber connections at reasonable consumer pricing in Kansas City.

Maybe there is a bit of envy in there, but who hasn't looked at something and said to themselves "I could do better"? I'd say that, for the most part, they have.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system) [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_(Apple)

[beatle]

>Android was purchased by Google two years prior to the release of iOS

-Steve Jobs started planning the development of the iPhone in 2002.

-Apple's collaboration with Motorola to produce the Rkr E1 started in 2004.

- Official Development of the iPhone started early 2005.

-Google bought Android in Aug 2005

[untog]

I think Google+ is the only one that qualifies as a knee-jerk reaction, as Google realised very suddenly that social is a valuable currency on the internet, and they didn't have any.

Aside from that, there are no kneejerks in your list. Android was bought two years before the iPhone came out. Chrome was not a response to any kind of threat to Google. They created Google Offers after GroupOn refused to be bought. Google Docs was clearly an innovation, not a reaction. I could go on...

[dmishe]

>Android was bought two years before the iPhone came out.

obligatory http://www.technobuffalo.com/companies/google/android/androi...

[untog]

Not really relevant in this case, though. Clearly, Google was planning to get involved in the mobile space before the iPhone. The physical form of that involvement may have changed, but that doesn't qualify Android as a "knee-jerk reaction".

In any case, since then the iPhone notification tray has clearly copied Android, etc. etc. All to the benefit of the end user, IMO.

[beatle]

>The physical form of that involvement may have changed, but that doesn't qualify Android as a "knee-jerk reaction".

Android copying the iPhone's user interface, touch screen, form factor, ecosystem, etc. is a knee-jerk reaction to iOS.

[dpritchett]

Considering the relative growth curves of RIM and Android since 2007, I think switching from "Linux/Java Blackberry clone" to "Linux/Java iPhone clone" was a solid decision.

[beatle]

doesn't change the fact that Android is an inferior product.

[duaneb]

It may be a knee-jerk reaction, but it was also the best decision. The iPhone represented a gigantic leap in usability on phones, and if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. If Google didn't come out with Android, Apple would own even more of the market than they do today.

[neilk]

I'll grant you Plus, Offers, Places, and Tablets are due to competitive pressure. But even so, in most of those, they have not gone the route of just cloning the competitor.

Chrome was strictly about advancing the web platform, for users and application makers. Google figures that anything which makes the web better automatically benefits them. And it's been a brilliant success.

[saturdaysaint]

I agree in a lot of big categories - although I think they contribute even when they're nominal competitors more than leaders - but Chrome and Docs were both godsends. Chrome was a huge breakthrough in browser performance and I'll never buy a personal copy of Office again thanks to Docs. If you're going to call those "reactions", then any of their landmark products - search, Gmail, Maps, YouTube (an acquisition but a key one) - could be called reactionary.

[j_baker]

You could come up with a similar list for just about any big corporation. A few of these really don't prove your point though, because you're comparing them to services that are also copies of something else.

iPad = Nokia N800 Facebook = Myspace, Friendster IE/Firefox = Mosaic MS Office = Lotus

I suspect that if we really put time into this, we could come up with examples of things the others might be considered copies of. Good artists copy, great artists steal.