Has Google become just a warehouse for well-educated, overpaid 20-somethings, that exists only to keep them from actually accomplishing something? At another company, of course.

How many of these people will be functionally useless when Google spits them out, to be replaced with the next group of kids with perishable skills? What innovations would these engineers create if their talents were put to better use?

What do Google’s super smart people do all day? It certainly doesn’t show. Even in its core business — search — I can’t see what Google has done to help me lately.

Google’s record of accomplishment and success beyond its cash cow search business isn’t very good. The company couldn’t even match the innovation of a programmable thermostat vendor and paid $3 billion to get one. Reports that Google wanted Nest only as a somewhat genetic hardware development team means Google lacks the ability to innovate in-house.

Of course, billions don’t really matter to Google. They can lose many more. But the change in perception should matter.

Google has been thought of as a really smart company that hires only the best. But, what do they have to show for it? Google Apps? Google+? Orkut? And how does a self-driving car put huge dollars into Google’s pockets? Or a contact lens?

Google Glass only make the a case that the company has “gone creepy” and become more of a threat to our privacy than the NSA.

Three years ago, when Google paid $12.5 billion for Motorola’s cellphone business, I couldn’t imagine what, if anything, Google was thinking. Turns out they weren’t thinking and this week’s sale of the business to Lenovo for $3 billion proves it.

Missed opportunities or fear of the future?

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Yes, Google keeps patents supposedly worth billions, but wireless handsets have become another area where Google has failed. That is a category which includes essentially everything Google has tried except tying searches to advertising, and Google didn’t invent that.

People will point out that Android is beating the iPhone in global sales, but that simply provides a platform for Google to deliver advertising, and is a defensive move. Android is not a huge profit center for Google and will never, on its own, become one. It does, however, create competition for Apple.

Anything that involves human beings and cannot be totally automated seems beyond Google’s grasp. Whatever chance Google Apps had of becoming widely accepted seems to have been lost. Google+ and other social media attempts haven’t progressed beyond the status of also-rans that Google’s considerable clout cannot turn into winners.

In fact, Google is beginning to look like a Middle Eastern country that knows its oil will run out someday and is grasping for something that will drive future revenue. With its interests in robotics, wearables and automobiles (another robot), is Google making a bet that the Internet or even search is not a long-term play?

Is Google betting all of today’s core businesses will soon be commoditized? And, if so, what does that mean? It’s worth some thought and it’s possible Google is not the failure it can so easily be portrayed as being.

photo credit: Sinistra Ecologia Libertà via photopin cc