MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) ? Google CEO Larry Page has closed about 20 of the Internet search leader’s less popular services during his first nine months on the job so he can pour more money and resources into other areas that he believes are more likely to bear fruit. The increased concentration on existing products such as Google’s Android software, Chrome Web browser, Plus social networking service and YouTube video site prompted one analyst to wonder how many new products the company plans to develop.
Page addressed the subject during a Thursday conference call covering Google’s fourth-quarter earnings.
QUESTION: Are you still innovating across new products around the consumer? And anything that’s not tied to advertising as we look ahead?
ANSWER: I didn’t mean to imply in any way that we were stopping innovating and I think we will continue to launch new products and new areas and things that are not necessarily advertising supported, as we have had been doing for a while, and I’m very excited about that.
But we may not launch a hundred such things; we may launch a few … over the next few years. I think we’ll try to make sure we’re more concentrated in our efforts and make sure we’re producing really amazing products for our users and for our customers that are really well thought out and work really well … . We’ve really just been concentrating our efforts around our innovation and making sure we are doing a really great job on the things that we really care about and that really matter to the world.
