I think one thing that people <i>definitely</i> forget is that many of those <i>were</i> startups at one time. Lots of the peripheral technology offerings Google has were not developed originally in-house -- they were acquired with ad-revenue from their flagship.<p>And as I posted in another comment (<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1093455" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1093455</a>), outside of Apps for business, really don't make any money for anybody. A quick analysis shows that subtract search/ad revenue and Google Apps for business, and <i>all</i> other offerings have to fit within about $100mil/yr revenue stream. This makes me think that most of the acquisitions have failed to grow much since being purchased.<p>Again, Google may be full of smart people, and I love using Google products, but money makers they are not.