Google's Nonsearch Services

Though they don't account for much in the way of revenues, the search giant's other online tools do demand plenty of employees and expenditures

Search advertising may constitute nearly all of Google's (GOOG) revenues, but it keeps pushing into new areas beyond search. Spending on such initiatives—from Gmail to the purchase last fall of video-sharing site YouTube to the release of Google Apps online office applications—is something of an issue as the company keeps doubling its hiring every year (to more than 12,000 at last count) to pump out the new services.

So how are all these initiatives doing? That's hard to judge, since it's not always obvious what their goal is: simply getting more traffic or page views on which to sell ads, gathering user data that will help target ads better, or charging fees to create an entirely new revenue stream. Here's a sampling of how Google's nonsearch services are faring:

Gmail
Released for general public use in February, the free e-mail program has been widely praised for its simplicity. So far, though, it's not clear how well ads targeted to e-mail content can work—and such targeting raises serious privacy concerns.

Google Apps
A corporate package of Gmail, Google Calendar, and the Google Talk voice and instant messaging service, bundled into an online office-software suite, was released in February; word processing and spreadsheet services have since been added. Tens of thousands of people at universities and businesses are already using the service, which will cost $50 per user per year, far less than Microsoft's (MSFT) Outlook.

YouTube
With more than 100 million videos viewed per day and a unique monthly audience of nearly 43 million people in the U.S. alone, Google's video-sharing site is clearly a hit. But it's facing a legal firestorm from Viacom (VIA) and others, which accuse it of copyright violations. And it's not clear what kinds of ads users will accept.

Froogle
Just renamed Google Product Search, the shopping search service has languished since its introduction in 2002, trailing far behind leaders such as eBay's (EBAY) Shopping.com and E.W. Scripps' (SSP) Shopzilla.

Google Checkout
The Web shopping cart was seen as a potent rival to eBay's PayPal when it was introduced last year. Thanks to a rebate deal to stores and consumers, thousands of Web stores now offer it, but PayPal's continued rapid growth indicates Checkout won't be the PayPal killer many have assumed.

DoubleClick
Google announced on Apr. 13 that it would buy the online ad services firm for $3.1 billion. But the deal won't close for months, partly since it may face antitrust scrutiny. So while it would give Google an instant entry into online display ads, it's not expected to affect Google's prospects until as far out as 2009.

Orkut
Google's social-networking foray is widely seen as a bust, though success in countries such as Brazil has apparently prompted the company to keep investing in the site.

Blogger
Purchased by Google in 2003, the blogging service is one of the Web's most popular. But since it's free, it's unclear what kind of benefit Google's getting from it.

Picasa
The photo site Google bought in 2004 doesn't seem to have matched the popularity of sites such as Photobucket and Yahoo's (YHOO) Flickr.