Re:Google have taken their eyes off the ball (Score 4, Insightful)

I have seen numerous people claim that Google is starting losing focus or take their eyes off the prize (ball, etc) but I have yet to see any conclusive evidence. The truth is Google has an insane number of smart people working for them and each one is supposed to be using 20% of their time to work on a pet project of sorts. Every so often these projects get released as betas and add to the growing package of google "apps". While many of these apps are still imperfect and unpolished (as befits the beta title) they are all at the least interesting additions to their respective categories. People see this endless flow of new google releases and think they are spreading themselves thin when in fact each "app" is probably being developed by a small group of programmers who are interested and devoted to the project.

My points are these:

• The fact that google is releasing so many products does not mean they have stopped thinking about search. In fact PageRank was tweaked once again just a few days ago. They probably still have a hugs number of employees devoted entirely to search.
• While their competitors are starting to catch up, Google still has a big lead in the search arena and is far from losing it if only because of mindshare.
• By releasing so many products in so many areas Google assures themselves of not being left behind in any area of the web. They are testing the waters of RSS (Google Reader), Web Acceleration, VOIP, soon micro-payments and now structured data storage and classifieds and whatever else Google Base will become.

In conclusion Google has their foot in every door and whichever ones lead to higher revenue they will follow. I think it's a solid business plan.