[Mikeb85]

What boat did Google miss? Seems to me they're achieving their goals. They own search, they own video (YouTube), they have a very successful mobile OS, they have a successful desktop platform (Chrome OS and the Chrome browser), and they're innovating faster than anyone.

[coldcode]

Yes but the problem is most of their revenues come from one thing - advertising. What their leadership is innovating desperately is to have something else people will give them money for. Successful companies have many things they make money on. You can be successful giving everything away for free when you are small and hope to IPO or get WhatsApped. When you are a real company you need lots of things that make money so that no single one of them failing will hurt you.

[nissehulth]

Well, their "own" video was Google Video, that did fail and was replaced by Youtube.

[AaronIG]

Which they acquired in 2006 (less than 20 months after YouTube launched). They've been driving YouTube for quite some time now.