In July 2006 I posted Google should buy Starbucks -- NOW! and received many less than favorable comments. I was way too glib in my post and that took away from the serious points I was trying to make. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is still a one-trick pony. Yes, they bought YouTube but they are far from generating profits from that. They paid $1.65 billion for this acquisition and contracted with News Corp's (NYSE: NWS) MySpace (TM) for another $900 million in a collaborative effort, and spent millions more on legal matters, further site development costs. All told they are probably approaching $3 billion in cost for these two deals, and will carry losses until some future date when they make some money, but so far what have they done?

They are making some money with Google CheckOut (TM), a quasi PayPal (TM) competitor owned by Ebay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) but nothing to write home about. Googles other initiatives amount to offerings that are all "me too" add ons that dilute the Internet further but add nothing new. If gmail did not exist people would not be missing much and that can be said for many other things they have explored.

Continue reading Google should buy Starbucks - go ahead and laugh!

Google should buy Starbucks - go ahead and laugh! originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.