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Comment by yashap | Hacker News Reader

You really think Google have a failure to innovate? Obviously search was their first, core innovation, but over the years they’ve delivered so many other successful products (many acquired, true, but even those they’ve evolved really well). Off the top of my head:

- Maps

- AdWords

- Gmail

- YouTube

- Analytics

- Translate

- Calendar

- Sheets

- Docs

- Drive

- Meet

- Slides

- Drawings

- Forms

- Trends

- Alerts

I’m sure I’m missing a bunch too. IMO they’ve pushed the envelope in a massive number of spaces, and continue to do so. That’s an incredible number of insanely successful software products for a 23 year old company.

Edit: I was thinking web/mobile apps there, missing obvious big ones like Android, Chrome, self-driving cars, a bajillion Google Cloud products, Chromebooks, Go, Dart/Flutter, AMP, Bazel, Protobuf, gRPC, Quik/HTTP2/3-related innovations, etc.

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Did you intentionally make a list of google acquisitions as a joke?

Many of these started as acquisitions, but they massively transformed them. For example, they acquired some products in the mapping space, but none of them remotely resembled what Google Maps have become.

Taking some starting point, hugely evolving it/transforming it, and growing it into a dominant market leading product, I personally consider that innovation.

For context though:

- Maps - 2005

- AdWords - 2000

- Gmail - 2004

- YouTube - 2005, but not founded by Google

- Analytics - 2005

- Translate - 2006 (but with neural machine engine in 2016)

- Calendar - 2006

- Sheets - 2006, but not founded by Google

- Docs - 2006, but not founded by Google

- Drive - 2012

- Slides - 2007, but based on acquisition

- Drawings - 2010

- Forms - Prior to 2014, couldn't find exact date

- Trends - 2006

- Alerts - 2003

Maps was also an acquisition.

Analytics was based on the acquisition of Urchin; the "utm" that is still seen in URL parameters today stands for "Urchin Tracking Module" [0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Analytics

I agree with you on how much innovation occurred at google, but I think the timeline of when these innovations occurred vs when leetcode interviews really took hold is what the commenters are addressing. In the old days they had crazy hiring processes where riding a unicycle helped your case. This ushered in a group of very brilliant creatives that innovated. Now, most hires are required to memorize data structures and algorithms- things that a lot of the smart creative people loathe to do, and as a result the pace of innovation has slowed to almost a halt.

My personal opinion is that there were too many chefs in the kitchen and google is now trying to optimize the “creative leader” to “can pump out rote code” ratio.

How old is the youngest of those? Any major new product younger than 10 years? - Sure they do incremental work an all of those, but where is the new?

That list would be a lot more informative and accurate id you include the launch date of each

Edited to add acquisitions, where appropriate:

- Maps (Keyhole, Where2, Endoxion)

- AdWords (Doubleclick)

- Gmail (reMail)

- YouTube (Youtube)

- Analytics (Urchin)

- Translate (Phonetic Arts)

- Calendar (Timeful)

- Docs (Upstartle)

AdWords was not based on double click

Google Maps, the web application, was not an acquisition. Google bought two companies that made desktop mapping tools (One of them lived on as Google Earth Pro and was a commercial product they kept selling for years) and used that as a basis for developing the web based Google Maps.

Also based on everything I can find, Gmail started as an in house project. reMail was acquired 5+ years after Gmail launched.

Agreed, this gets super fuzzy at some point, most quibbles with the list will probably have some merit.

I thought Gmail was someone's "20% time" personal project?

I think he's talking about today, not 10+ years ago.

Aren't they also mostly just web2.0 versions of Microsoft Office products? Like Docs and Sheets are just Word and Excel right? I feel like I'm missing something. Certainly putting them in browser plus some cloud storage is innovative, but doesn't it seem kind of obvious?

Youtube was purchased, so that one isn't anything innovated in house.

acquisition is not innovation. However, they did make some very shrewd business moves there.

Google makes all their money off search advertising. They always have, and still do. They are a one trick pony with one REALLY good trick.

Ads is the only thing on that list that brings in revenue.

Drive (and docs/gmail) is also profitable. So is maps and youtube.

Maps and Translate have paid APIs available.

Aren’t all of those products over a decade old by now?

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