How does google make money with google chrome?

Why should I respect Google when, at best, they can only build well-designed products that make little money?

• It seems to be conventional wisdom to respect Google, or at least be intimidated by Google if they choses to compete with your startup. Why should that be the case? Despite launching dozens of new products, Google has failed to acquire/build any profit driver that's as big as AdWords/AdSense. At best, their products are decent and has good market share, but only delivers a minor profit stream (Gmail, Youtube, Google Docs, Android, Google Reader). A lot of their major projects are actually complete train wrecks (Google Wave, Google Buzz, Knol, Orkut). It's not clear how this "build product first and worry about revenue later" product strategy is panning out with Google. The Search product followed this strategy and was monetized successfully with AdWords. Apparently that was pure luck. Why should my company build products according to Google's best practices? Or why should I care if Google builds a product in my space? Update: Question used to be "Why should I respect Google?", but I've updated it to elaborate on why I'm challenging the assumption that Google is a good role model.

• Answer:

  I reject the premise. I can't tell you why you should respect Google, but implying that they don't deserve respect because their products don't make money is absurd. If you choose not to respect them because none of their other ventures are as successful as Search then I'd remind you that Search represents 70% of their manpower. It's more likely that Google will acquire your startup than that it will develop an internal project that will surpass it, but the opposite is often true. Google Maps, Reader, Gmail, Image Search, News and a number of others have outlasted and surpassed dozens of startups that preceded them or tried to unseat them. I'm not sure what your underlying question is, but if it's "Why should I worry about Google when starting my own company?" then you probably have the right attitude for starting your own company because fatalism is fatal when starting a startup. If your question is simply a means of saying 'Google sucks, why don't people see that?' then I don't have an answer for you other than the one I've just given. Elaboration left in comments appended to answer by request: While I feel that Google has been unsuccessful in its attempts to  compete in the Social space, I think that this has been a consistant  weak area at Google, and the fact that there were several attempts in  Social in the last few years doesn't mean that Google is no longer  capable of creating products that make money. A few thoughts in no particular order: A)  Google products that gain traction and gather dedicated user bases have  the secondary effect of increasing both search engagement and brand  loyalty. Whether or not a product is profitable based solely on  in-product advertising or subscription fees, that product may still  generate substantial secondary profits by the positive changes it makes  in user behavior around the other products in the brand. This trait is  not exclusive to Google by any means. B) Products in the Social  space are especially good examples of this. It's notoriously hard to  make 'Social' products that produce a substantial revenue stream. Part  of the nature of the life cycle of Social products is that you forgo  monetization in favor of increased user satisfaction, engagement, and te  resulting virality and gradually blend in monetization once you have an  established product with a strong value proposition and established  user base. It's a non-starter to use profitability to judge the success  of Social products that are still in their early growth stages. C)  Google shows its excellence when it revisits a product space that has  generally acknowledged to have plateaued, where innovation has been  stagnant. Taking a clean-sheet approach to the product space and coming  up with something highly functional and tackling 'hard' engineering  problems that had been avoided by competitors is the hallmark to  Google's most notable successes. Search, Maps and Gmail are good  examples of this. Search, webmail and online maps had been around (and  stagnating) for years before Google entered the space, but it did so in a  substantially different or better way. D) Google shows its  weaknesses when it tries to compete or catch-up in a product space that  has gained traction on the shoulders of other companies. This is what's  happening in Social right now. E) My personal opinion is that the  difference between products in 'C' and 'D' is that products that fit  'C' usually arise from small teams of motivated people who push forward  an idea, create a proof of concept, and gain momentum from the ground  up, while products in the 'D' category are initiated by strategic  direction from the top and teams are assembled around this idea. It's  harder to innovate on demand, and the pressure to deliver a product to  fit the needs of executive management on schedule generates a completely  different quality of product than when a team has the pressure to  create a great product in order to convince executive management that  their idea should be productized in the first place. The first is trying  to meet an expectation. The second is trying to overcome adversity. F(inally)  I think we have very different views of Google as a company and what  its measures of success are. I see Google's profitability in search (and  third-party advertising, and Android, both of which were billion dollar  businesses for Google in 2010) as the profit centers that enable them  to make other products that help Google's users. This is a key  point because it addresses your final question (paraphrased): 'Why would  I want to follow any of Google's product development practices of  spending tens of millions of dollars to develop products without a  monetization strategy?' The answer is -- unless you're a multi-billion  dollar company with substantial profits around a strong brand -- you  shouldn't. Pursuing lines of research to make discoveries and experience  failures is a strategy that makes sense at different levels for  different organizations. A startup would likely find value in  exploring a few variations on their primary idea to discover more about  the ideal breadth of their product, but squandering their seed money  dabbling in 10 ideas would be a poor choice. Once you're established and  can afford to explore ways to grow your business in different areas the  idea has a lot more merit. Rather than teaching with a broad brush and  saying that Google's experimental product strategy 'should be frowned  upon,' it would be more valuable to teach how the principles of product  strategy evolve as an organization evolves. That would be a valuable  lesson for organizations in any field.