The funny thing is that the supposedly mature "we're a public, billion dollar grown up corporation now" approach almost always ends up robbing the company of its ability to lead and innovate.

Google is neglecting products it's great at (eg GAE) to focus on areas it's completely clueless about (like Google+). There's no real risk here, the ads are going to continue pumping cash in, but it's slowly becoming a big dumb company.

My bet is that within 2 years they will buy someone like Twitter or FourSquare for n*$100m, and you'll know the new AOL has arrived.