[Esras]

I think the sentiment is usually paired with discussion about those products as long-lasting, revenue-generating things. Many of those ended up feeding back into Search and Ads. As an exercise, out of the list you described, how many of those are meaningfully-revenue-generating, without ads?

A phrasing I've heard is "Google regularly kills billion-dollar businesses because that doesn't move the needle compared to an extra 1% of revenue on ads."

And, to be super pedantic about it, Android and YouTube were not products that Google built but acquired.

[MegaDeKay]

They bought YouTube but you have to give Google a hell of a lot of credit for turning it into what it is today. Taking ownership of YouTube at the time was seen by many as taking ownership of an endless string of copyright lawsuits, suing them into oblivion.

[hadlock]

Youtube maintains an independent campus from the google/alphabet mothership, I'm curious how much direction they get, as (outwardly, at least) appear to run semi-autonomously.

[projektfu]

Before Google touched Android it was a cool concept but not what we think of today. Apparently it didn't even run on Linux. That concept came after the acquisition.

[tempest_]

That is because the DoubleClick parasite has long infected the host.