First, let me say, your comments are very insightful. You force me to amend my position a bit. :-) Regarding your first point -- you are right. Google can't

First, let me say, your comments are very insightful. You force me to amend my position a bit. :-) Regarding your first point -- you are right. Google can't really be like VC. As a company, they are not expected to have failures. Looking at their trading history in 2008, it looks like concerns over stuff like monetizing YouTube is kicking them in the reputation. I think, however, that they are also suffering from a thing that the media loves to do -- turn in its darlings. Once a "gee-whiz" media baby stops being exciting because of its newness, it is popular to try to take the "darker" angle on it. I think this started in the geek community with the Google in China business a few years ago, and now it's hitting the wider world. I think this would be a problem for Google regardless of their product strategy. I also suspect that, while Google can't be like VC, they're not really like normal companies, either. I think people expect them to be a little more experimental and to fail a little bit more often -- although, on a smaller scale than YouTube. I think that people still think, "Small failures from Google are just signs of progress." It probably wouldn't hurt them to be a bit more conservative right now with their stock taking a dive. Finally, I don't think that Google has lost their geek-hipness just yet. I, for one, still think tha Google spits out a couple interesting services every year. They aren't us cool as they used to be, and the Google cool factor will probably wear off for them eventually. But, as one of my co-founders says, they can "burn that bridge when they get to it."