If you want to look at a company like Google, at least mention that they're generating $16 billion in revenue a year. Yes, they took 10 years, but look at the power of their brand, all of the applications they've built and gotten into the marketplace, plus all of their revenue. They're also "the best place to work at" (so you know they're doing a lot more than just product development). Google isn't just a search company anymore, and that's not what they've been spending all of their time doing since 1996.

10 years? You better have something extremely impressive if you're given THAT much time.

How did this get so many votes up? Is the HN community getting soft or what? ;) (I can sense the massive downvotes on this response already)