Google could very well be a one hit wonder. Coming from someone who works at a company with one successful product and many failed ones: Maybe they are too wealthy to want a second success. Life is cozy.
There's no evidence that YouTube is profitable[1]. In fact, there's no evidence any of this is profitable.
Android, Gmail, and Maps make money from ads, not from charging users directly. That makes them the same business as search.
Hardware businesses like Home and Chromecast usually aren't profitable, and Google (like Amazon) is likely using them to keep people in their ecosystem.
That leaves Drive, which might have some good margins, but they give it away for free to many users...
Every day that Youtube exists without competitors it further solidifies itself as the only video platform like itself that will exist.
Gmail makes money from business users and I would go as so far to say that if it doesn't make more money that Drive now it will make more money in 10 years from people who have lived their entire lives inside of a gmail account using it for business.
It said in the article G Suite might account for the bulk of Google Clouds revenue, since its combined in their financial reports with the infrastructure stuff and G Suite is extremely popular.
If the metric for success is revenue then, no, they are not by any sensible measure super successful. Their revenue combined it’s a small fraction of search/ads.
By that standard, practically all other companies are failures, since practically all other companies pale in comparison to Google search. So I would say your claim is absurd.
