What they definitely don't do well is corporate marketing and sales. I've been involved in two RFP's in which Google were invited, and in both instances Google

What they definitely don't do well is corporate marketing and sales. I've been involved in two RFP's in which Google were invited, and in both instances Google lost out to other vendors. Two significant factors in their losing out were: 1) the naked arrogance and almost-disinterest of their people when in the room with the client's business people i.e. the people signing off on the vendor selection. 2) non-trivial examples of products that were terminated at short notice, in some cases with no clear migration path. While 2 can be mitigated, it was 1 that stuck with me. I've been in the room with quite a few big vendors and Google were BY FAR the most arrogant. Quite appallingly so actually. SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM - however crap some of their products and services may be (as are some of Google's), they at least have the common sales sense to make the prospective client feel listened to. In my experience, SAP were masters at this.