> Microsoft and Google both suffer from the same disease, they try to sell a product, not address a need.

Actually, Chrome and Nexus-branded Android phones are the only Google products that I've seen advertised, ever. Of their hundreds of products, those 2 are the only ones that they're trying to "sell". In fact, Wave was pretty much their only product that comes to mind that didn't address a need (or at least that was the public perception), hence its inevitable demise. The rest (Search, Gmail, Docs, Android, Chrome, etc) were all direct responses to problems that people had.