Some devil's advocate:

1) They bought Android - they didn't build it in-house.

2) They bought Double Click - they didn't build it in-house

3) They bought YouTube- they didn't build it in-house

4) Third most popular cloud platform is a bit disingenuous; it's like saying Apple Maps is a top mapping platform: sure, you're kind of right, but the gap at the top is fairly wide.

(You might even make the case that the best parts of Chrome weren't built in-house, but taken from open-source contributions via Chromium, but I'm not sure I quite buy that.)

I think the overarching thesis deserves merit: what was the last in-house built product that became a powerhouse with true sticking power, besides Gmail / Google Apps?

They bought Android at a time when it had 0% market share. They changed direction significantly after the acquisition and grew from 0% to 80% over half a decade and then maintained that position. It was not a foregone conclusion that Android would be dominant after it was acquired. Also, it takes effort and skill to maintain your position in a competitive market, which they've managed for half a decade more.

People seriously underestimate how difficult it is to succeed and continue to succeed.

I mean, youtube, sure (though more the mindshare than the product itself), but what's left of the Android that was acquired? They didn't even have a product at the time so everything they ever released was as part of Google. And Ad Words wasn't an acquisition.

After some amount of time, for most acquisitions this argument becomes silly.

Apple acquired NeXT and PA Semi. And I hear Jony Ive was hired, not grown in a vat in Cupertino. Apple didn't build its hardware, software, or design in house!

Google bought Android 13 years ago, for a reported $50M. The kinds of hardware it runs on and its overall strategy have both evolved massively since then. I think at this point it's a big disingenuous to dismissively say that Android was just an acquisition.

I mean it's kinda true. But they still had to figure out that these were the projects/companies worth buying and afterwards pursuing and advancing them such that they would become the cash-cows they are today.

IMHO the Google Home devices and Chromecast are quite successful.

I admit these are probably not powerhouses on the level of Android, Chrome or YouTube. However it's just not possible to create a powerhouse every 1 or 2 years.

YouTube at least was already well on in that direction - Google had a competing product that was a total flop, and only afterwards did they buy YouTube.

They bought YouTube for a billion dollar - which was back then a crazy number. I still remember all that people arguing (including me) that Google would never make so much money back from YouTube. YouTube even had the reputation for being a huge loss for Google for multiple years.

The YouTube deal was a boardroom backscratch to the Sand Hill Road VCs. YouTube was hemorrhaging money on bandwidth with zero possibility of ever being profitable.

Google Photos ?

Huge cost center. Very difficult to draw a line of monetization between GP and the very hazy "its a value add to Pixel customers, and we can use the photos to train our AIs to get better at object recognition which might have applications in advertisement targeting in the future."

Are they still third in cloud if you don't count Microsoft's Office revenue?

Azure is a different business unit than Office.

Some of those purchased (OS, video, ads), some of those getting considerably worse as years pass (search engine, maps). And don't forget adtech will eventually blow up.

But well, if they can keep buying stuff, then they are okay. It's what Facebook is doing.