Forget the benchmarks, forget whether its truly faster or slower, forget whether the market share is 30% for non-IE browsers (though is this only for US or internationally). Google Chrome evolution or revolution, whatever you want to call it, it makes me actually want to stay in the browser. I just want plugins, that function as well as the browser alone does. Yeah theres rendering problems, and some oddities, but the browser as a whole is smooth. I actually feel thus far its the best of IE and safari melded together. The only problem I see right now is the lack of plugins, which my guess is will come VERY SOON. Meanwhile firefox when having the plugins I want enabled can be sluggish, if Chrome plugins are of equivilant quality then I can’t see how the browser wouldn’t be at LEAST as smooth.

Chrome really is a win for Google, whether they can monetize it or not. It helps them to keep people off the desktop and in the browser. I could go on for hours about bad moves they’ve made, such as picasa, but Chrome was actually a good one.

As I write this, I write only from my vague knowledge of where revenue’s come directly from. However, I do hope to back this up in the future with more numeric backing. My title of the post may be quite strong and negative, but I feel it has reasonable ground to stand on, based on one simple principle. A corporation should stick to and focus on it’s core business, and exhausting resources outside it’s core business could end up costing them their business.

As it is, Google’s primary revenue comes from advertising, they’re the primary source for advertising because of their search engine. While some may say their core business is data, I disagree, as how are they making money off of data. Data simply allows them to better target their ads. With Google’s attitude of “Do no wrong” they are unlikely to profit from the consolidation and sales of such data.

Meanwhile Google is exhausting their resources with little to show for it. Google over the past 5 years has been hiring some of the top talent within Silicon Valley. Paying good salaries for individuals that are supposed to be some of the best software engineers in the industry. I’m not suggesting that the individuals are not sharp, but what has Google truly produced from within it’s own walls? Google has bought many of it’s out lier products, i.e. Google Earth, Google Spreadsheets, Picasa, and others. First if they are to go into these areas they should strictly focus on acquisitions and have a smaller developer base.

Though from my perspective Google should not be investing in any of the three products mentioned above. While cool and arguably good products, how does Google plan on making money from these? If they are exhausting resources and effort into these products, at the expense of improving both search and ad’s they’re not focusing on their core business as they should be

Finally, if Google is not pouring into these two areas, search and ad’s, it only takes being beaten by one to be unseated. As soon as a company is able to do search better, or ad’s better Google will lose the majority, if not all of their revenue. While they may be able to stay around after someone else has become a dominant player, it will only be as a very small fraction of what they currently are.

I’m not predicting that Google will be gone in 8 years, but unless they really start to devote to their core business and quit wasting resources on un-needed areas they will have something to worry about.