Is Google the Alanis Morrissette of the web?

Scott Karp thinks so . The venerable web powerhouse has been taking quite a kicking of late - not from free-speech campaigners angry at Google's policy toward search results in China, but from observers critquing the Mountain View, CA, outfit's "ready, fire, aim" approach to launching new products.

What started out life as a humble search engine has now grown to number in the region of 50 services, notable recent launches having included Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Spreadsheet, Writely and Google Checkout.

But a good number of Google's non-search services are still in beta (and still feel so much like they're in beta) and the latest edition of Business Week lays into the company for dropping the ball on everything other than its bread and butter.

"If you cut through the hype, Google's intimidation factor quickly fizzles. An analysis of some two dozen new ventures launched over the past four years shows that Google has yet to establish a single market leader outside its core search business. After sparking substantial buzz, most of Google's nonsearch offerings quickly fade from view. "

Karp ponders whether that means the site is a one-hit wonder: "I wonder if Google is like one of those musicians whose first album is such a runaway success that they are never able to outdo themselves — think Alanis Morissette."

Google search is in a class by itself. Is it any wonder that Google has not been able to reproduce this kind of dizzying success?

Yes, Alanis' first album was wonderful - it set heights never achieved by the Canadian songstress' subsequent releases - but lets not get ahead of ourselves here.

Yes, Google Video is still a dog, Google Talk is a cynical knock-off of the Jabber protocol and, in the stuttering Google Analytics roll-out, the company has managed to botch a product that worked just fine prior to Google's purchase of Urchin.

But Gmail, with its clean simplicity and super spam catching, is a daily essential; Google News has emerged from beta as one of the few services to let readers understand a story from all angles and drive traffic to publishers at the same time - and lets not forget the amazing upheaval AdWords is causing in the advertising and publishing industries.

I really don't know where the happy medium lays. Either you're a slow, lumbering giant like Microsoft, closed-minded and reluctant to share; or you throw all your balls up in the air as quickly as possible and see which ones take off. Isn't it ironic?

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