Google's future besides search

Google is a company that has a lot going for it. It has a reputation of being a great place to work, the leader in the area of search (a field that it essentially took over and made it the big size that it currently is), and has some solid public relations going for it (the fact that it continues to vanquish Microsoft means that more people see it in a positive light). The stock of the company continues to remain high. But all good things have to come to an end. Slowly, the sheen is starting to wear off and there are more critical analysis of the company that are starting to emerge. One major area for critical analysis is about the success of the company in fields other than search:

Google has been the world's hottest technology company for almost six years now. The Mountain View company not only completely dominates the search engine business, but it's had an absolute lock on Silicon Valley's psychology. Every new beta product that debuts generates enormous attention and seems to promise to revolutionize one more slice of the Web and communications. Just this week came the latest numbers from comScore indicating that Google increased its search market share over Microsoft and Yahoo. And the takeover squabble between those two has just reinforced the perception that Google has an almost unassailable position as the leading technology company.
"Name me anything they've been successful in beside search," Chowdhry said. "I think the board and management of Google need a total overhaul." OK, that's harsh. On the other hand, according to Google's own securities filings, the company expects its margins on advertising to continue to shrink and its revenue growth in this area to continue to slow. In addition, all those high-profile ventures the company has launched, and the acquisitions it's made, have yet to contribute much to the bottom line. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company noted that revenue from services such as YouTube, Google Checkout and a host of others "were not material."

Youtube in particular was much mocked (especially among the online community), since a purchase of $1.6 billion is not a small amount and a lot of analysts were unable to figure out as to how Google will make money on this transaction. It's other purchases such as Picassa, and initiatives like Google Earth, are seen as cool, and fitting into the ad space in the long term theme of things, but are a very long way away from making money. No one of its stockholders would grudge the purchase of something like Doubleclick, but stuff such as Picassa do not seem to make sense.