[rottyguy]

Seems like Google and Amazon are building similar companies baselined on revenues from disparate sources (AMZN: Merchandise/GOOG:Search -- realize this is not the complete picture but certainly the starting point). Interesting to see these types of companies emerge (ones willing to dilute/evolve from their original core competancy in order to sustain). Will traditional (large) companies do the same?

[makmanalp]

I'd go as far as suggesting that google actually makes the most cash from advertising, and all their other products are to show more users more ads.

I think this kind of generalization is not surprising and used to be the standard back in the day. Nokia at various points made rubber boots, paper, cables and telegraphs, tires, robotics, power generator components, gas masks, chemicals, televisions, telephone exchanges, etc. Mitsubishi did coal mining, insurance, banking, trade, optics and a ton of other things. Sony does life insurance and banking.

[InclinedPlane]

Amazon is already a far more diversified company than google. Google's revenue breaks down into: search, network (backbone ISP), and "other". Under "other" is gmail, gdocs, youtube, android, everything that isn't search. Google is very, very bad at productizing and monetiziation. They are even worse at maintaining customer relations with anyone other than advertisers. The same is not true of amazon, who began as a bookstore and have only become more and more diversified over time.

[Pxtl]

Has Google moved into the gaming industry at all? I've always thought the lack of Google gaming assets was surprising given the popularity of Android games.

[Pxl_Buzzard]

Ingress[1] is a real-world game created by a startup within Google.

[1] https://www.ingress.com/

[mason240]

My guess is that Ingress (which is currently Android based) is a testing ground for eventually creating a real life, meatspace MMORPG that will be the "killer app" for Google Glass at mainstream launch.