Much as I despise Google's Minority Report style vision for the future where personalised advertising is plastered all over everything, and their evil actions regarding privacy...<p>... and much as I am allegedly a huge Apple fan ...<p>I still think it is unfair for people to compare the effectiveness of Eric by comparing Google's performance to Apple's performance.<p>Google is operating in a mostly saturated market (online search and advertising) in which they have a Microsoft style almost total monopoly. You just <i>don't</i> get spectacular growth numbers in those scenarios. Doesn't mean you can't squeeze the monopoly position to make great profits of course, but those profits aren't going to increase exponentially year after year without cease.<p>Apple on the other hand has been recently expanding into new markets (okay, some older ones too, and some borrowed and some blue) at an enormous rate. People laughed at them when they said they would enter the phone market. People laughed at them when they said they would enter the tablet market.<p>In fairly short order, they've totally disrupted <i>and defined</i> those two markets. Now personally I believe that their dominance in those markets will be short lived, but I think they will continue to lead the direction of those industries long after their market share has dropped below 10%.<p>Google's done what? They have a really nice e-mail service... but apart from that and the search/advertising thing what do they do? Oh, they bought youtube and slapped ads all over it... yeah... great work guys, but not exactly what I'd call innovative. Oh, they have a browser and a smartphone... but again not especially innovative.<p>I dunno, I just expected <i>more</i> from the 20% time of a bunch of PhDs sitting around?