zett - 7:54 am on Jul 17, 2012 (gmt 0)

@jmcc

Google Adwords and Adsense?

Er, yes, sure.

Adwords and Adsense derived from the acquisition of Applied Semantics in 2003. So, strictly speaking, this is not something that Google developed inhouse.

In any case, I see Adwords in a bundle with Google Search (one wouldn't be without the other). It is thus the base for the success of Google. It is Google's cash cow.

Adsense, on the other hand, has seen its best times a couple of years ago. Just have a look at the Adsense forum here to see that improvements to the program are demanded from webmasters (but not delivered by Google).

Google has many failed products (Base? Wave? Pages? Feedburner?) and abandoned acquisitions (Blogger? Panoramio? Orkut? Groups?) that have barely survived the hype.

Mayer and her team must have been responsible for the creation of this multi-headed hydra, so to see her to turn a similar multi-headed hydra (Yahoo!) into a cool, slim, focused service is hard to believe.