Android was purchased by Google two years prior to the release of iOS [1][2]
Tablets are the natural progression of mobile platforms, and existed prior to the iPad.
The massive contention about Android fragmentation and update/upgrade paths has steadily grown to the point that controlling an additional choke point in that process could significantly improve the ecosystem. By purchasing Motorola and operating it separately they can produce phones with shorter wait times between Android version releases and updates, and set precedents for other manufacturers to follow.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a myriad of other platforms have proven that social is a huge market. Google+ was late to the party, but they would be stupid to ignore it altogether.
Google Offers is a natural tie-in with a mobile payments platform (Google Wallet), which they were essentially first to market with in the US despite having not yet gained significant traction.
I'm not very familiar with the Google Places, Hotpot, or Yelp services, but it seems like a natural tie-in with their existing Maps service. And sure, MapQuest was around first, but it still is, and I don't know anybody that prefers it to Google Maps.
Chrome may seem "me too" at the moment, but when it first released it was a pretty big deal. They proved that browsers could be minimal and functional, and as they said themselves it only made sense for them to contribute to the web at all points, from server to client.
Google Docs took Office products into a completely new space, one which Microsoft is now having a knee-jerk reaction to with their Office 365 platform.
On top of that, there's plenty of originality to be had still. Their self-driving cars project is really taking off, just a few short years ago nobody would ever have dreamed it would be possible to have a street-level view of nearly every road in the US (and tons of other countries now), their single account/sync structure is undoubtedly the inspiration for iOS's recent iCloud service, and they're in the process of revolutionizing internet connectivity itself right now with end-to-end fiber connections at reasonable consumer pricing in Kansas City.
Maybe there is a bit of envy in there, but who hasn't looked at something and said to themselves "I could do better"? I'd say that, for the most part, they have.
Tablets are the natural progression of mobile platforms, and existed prior to the iPad.
The massive contention about Android fragmentation and update/upgrade paths has steadily grown to the point that controlling an additional choke point in that process could significantly improve the ecosystem. By purchasing Motorola and operating it separately they can produce phones with shorter wait times between Android version releases and updates, and set precedents for other manufacturers to follow.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a myriad of other platforms have proven that social is a huge market. Google+ was late to the party, but they would be stupid to ignore it altogether.
Google Offers is a natural tie-in with a mobile payments platform (Google Wallet), which they were essentially first to market with in the US despite having not yet gained significant traction.
I'm not very familiar with the Google Places, Hotpot, or Yelp services, but it seems like a natural tie-in with their existing Maps service. And sure, MapQuest was around first, but it still is, and I don't know anybody that prefers it to Google Maps.
Chrome may seem "me too" at the moment, but when it first released it was a pretty big deal. They proved that browsers could be minimal and functional, and as they said themselves it only made sense for them to contribute to the web at all points, from server to client.
Google Docs took Office products into a completely new space, one which Microsoft is now having a knee-jerk reaction to with their Office 365 platform.
On top of that, there's plenty of originality to be had still. Their self-driving cars project is really taking off, just a few short years ago nobody would ever have dreamed it would be possible to have a street-level view of nearly every road in the US (and tons of other countries now), their single account/sync structure is undoubtedly the inspiration for iOS's recent iCloud service, and they're in the process of revolutionizing internet connectivity itself right now with end-to-end fiber connections at reasonable consumer pricing in Kansas City.
Maybe there is a bit of envy in there, but who hasn't looked at something and said to themselves "I could do better"? I'd say that, for the most part, they have.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system) [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_(Apple)