If you think about it almost every Google product has been directly inspired by something else. They're in the business of evolutionary improvements and throwing their weight behind them (Offering 1GB storage on Gmail for example or free Google App Engine). Sounds kind of like what Microsoft did really.

Indeed. Even their adwords/adsense business model was copied from Overture.

When something is a god awful as Overture though, it makes a great deal of sense to copy parts of the model, but do it properly.

1. Because they are a business and there is also profit in exploiting existing markets.

2. Even if you ask an engineer what his or her dream product is, it's often something like "(existing thing) done right".

3. How do you know that your other examples won't turn out to be as innovative? It took Google years to figure out search advertising. You just think that Google miraculously produced perfect software the first time around, because you weren't paying as much attention before.

But I will grant you one point. The old Google had a rule that they wouldn't get into a market unless they thought they had a chance of being 10x better than anyone else. It's hard to believe that Lively is going to be 10x better than the other social MMOs.

#1 would be true if Google actually made money from anything other than their advertising products.

Actually, they do -- the Google intranet search thingy is profitable. There are a few other sources of revenue like Google Earth licensing. But these are like candles next to a supernova.

A search engine in 1998 was not original. The implementation and execution were. And Gmail bills itself as "a Google approach to email," so I think they are quite consciously doing the same old stuff in a totally new way.

Are there any products they've made that are really new, versus done better? I can't think of any, though I'm sure there must be a few.