I think that you can. To date, Google really only has one successful product (success meaning "makes money for Google") and that's Ad-sense.<p>Sure it's wildly successful. But if that stopped making money for Google tomorrow (for example, I automatically mentally filter out all advertisements in my search results, how long before everybody does that), what would their revenue and profitability picture look like? In almost every other product area outside of web search and <i>perhaps</i> email, where Google competes against another company, they haven't done well at all -- both in terms of users and in terms of dollars.<p>In other words, Google's first product, designed by a couple of grad students, is the loss leader that drives people to their one and only money making product that supplies 99% (not 30%, or 60% or even 80%, 99%!) of their operating capital.