Ok lets see it's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Therefore Google is an information organization company. More than search, it's also monetizing the effort of getting all the information into proprietary databases and keeping them up to date.
Google Maps, Google Places, Google Search, etc.
Then they monetize it by advertising, as well as running their own commerce - app stores and the like. And they also give businesses Analytics, Email, Docs and other Apps that they have now unified with Google+ as well as Google Checkout for payment processing.
Now Apple, Google and Amazon compete in phone OSes, payment processing platforms etc.
Ok lets see it's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Therefore Google is an information organization company. More than search, it's also monetizing the effort of getting all the information into proprietary databases and keeping them up to date.
Google Maps, Google Places, Google Search, etc.
Then they monetize it by advertising, as well as running their own commerce - app stores and the like. And they also give businesses Analytics, Email, Docs and other Apps that they have now unified with Google+ as well as Google Checkout for payment processing.
Now Apple, Google and Amazon compete in phone OSes, payment processing platforms etc.