Sure, but most of these otherwise successful products never even attempted a business model. I could pick a dozen Google apps today and challenge you to determi

Sure, but most of these otherwise successful products never even attempted a business model. I could pick a dozen Google apps today and challenge you to determine how Google ever expected to benefit from them. Ironically, most random Google apps don't even display ads. I assume some might exist solely to collect ad data, but I am not sure if Google's ad team is investing steadily in how to mine worthwhile data out of each and every scattered new Google app. Which is to say, there's probably a decent number of apps Google created and shut down, which probably would've been pretty successful companies on their own with a modest monetization model. But Google never attempted it, because the user count didn't hit nine figures.