>Going public gave Google a lot of nearly-free money to grow, and it's how you've gotten both Gmail

Gmail launched in April 2004, and the company went public in August 2004, so what you said is not literally true.

> and Google+

Thanks for the chuckle.

If they only had successful products, that would be a sign that they didn't innovate enough.

If you innovate manically, you get Google Wave and Google+ amongst good products.

(However, this doesn't work in the other direction: having a few duds doesn't prove that you are innovative.)