I don't really agree: it's pretty simplistic to boil Google's history down to two products developed 20 years ago.

I'm not really sure why you say that cloud compute isn't a moat. It's an enormous investment to compete there; there's a reason even large companies buy compute from GCP/Azure/AWS or even if they have their own compute don't attempt to compete. Additionally, GCP has been an enormously successful 'bet' for Google over the past decade.

Google has also turned subscription revenue for their various services into a major revenue stream; it'd be hard to call those various services (Google Drive, Google Play, etc.) anything other than successful.

Chrome doesn't generate revenue by itself, but it certainly drives advertising revenue across the rest of Google's portfolio and was developed in-house.

Finally, it's pretty strange to credit the success of YouTube as a revenue stream with a small loss-making company that was acquired in 2006 rather than Google, who has run it for the past 20 years.

Android, Maps and Chrome I use it almost daily for years. Dont know if are great at revenue, but are great products for me :)

Why separate out products developed internally versus acquired and growth? There is an almost moralistic element in the tone of “well they just bought it”. Sure, they bought it and grew it into a behemoth, plus what really matters is not the provenance but how much money it makes for them. Plus, it’s reasonable to call YouTube (and instagram, which also gets the same treatment) two of the all time best corporate acquisitions. It’s not easy to buy a company and grow it like that.

Working with GCP for 6 month now; AWS, with its own weird concepts, is superior. True enterprise.

As a simple example, a week ago we had the GCP outage in UK, their status page said all was good.

Not a moat and not big but... for SMEs "Google Workspace" is a godsend from outter space.

This is what allow little SMEs to not have to suffer that piece of shit that Windows is. I know people running their SMEs (and I helped them set up Google Workspace) from Mac and Chromebooks since years and years and who do not ever want to here again from anything Microsoft.

They're basically doing everything inside "Google Workspace" (formerly "G Suite", formerly "Google apps for domain" because Google's product naming is just confusing).

Gemini is also IMO excellent for everything that is not coding. It's really rare that I use Anthropic models (which I pay a subscription for) for anything else than coding.

GMail / Drive / Google Docs / Google Spreadsheets are great for a shitload of SMEs out there who want to give Windows and Office the middle finger.

Google Pixel / Android are very popular. Chromebooks also did well.

It's absurd to say that Google did not develop YouTube. They acquired it at a point where it was a galaxy-scale cash incinerator and made it work economically using their superior platform.

That’s nonsense. What about Maps, Sheets, Android, Meet, Chrome, Cloud etc. I don’t even know how you can exclude YouTube. It’s basically something they’ve worked on for more than a decade at this point. The number of google products we all use on a daily basis is pretty stunning.

I don't think the question of "good products" is really relevant here; the important aspect is profitable products. And in that arena, nothing beats the money printer!

They used to have a second minimint in AdSense et. al. ("Display Advertising"), but that shrinks by the year economy-wide as the vicious cycle of data tracking, ad blocking, and paywall dodging continues. Now it's a mere $7B[1], compared to $11B for Youtube (technically also Display Advertising but it gets its own segment now, I guess) and $63B from the money printer proper.

[1] Actual report here: https://s206.q4cdn.com/479360582/files/doc_financials/2026/q... Interestingly, display revenues are slightly up! But still, in Google land, "slightly up" is potentially a scandalous failure. Perhaps they settled into better agreements with big publishers ("sell side") after it became clear that they wouldn't actually be punished for having a Display Ads monopoly, despite losing the antitrust case brought by Biden's DoJ.

:(