• The New York Times, Tuesday, October 10, 2006 11:02 AM

"Call it Google Sprawl," says The New York Times. The moniker doesn't necessarily refer directly to Google's acquisition of YouTube yesterday. Online video isn't new territory for the Web giant. The issue is a perennial concern for Google: The task of staying the course with a multiplicity of unfinished products. Even before its 2004 initial public offering, Google's strategy has been one of deploying sets of engineering teams to create new products without actually finishing them.

In fact, most of Google's products are still in what's called "beta" or test phase. Just last week, founders Sergey Brin, Larry Page and company chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt discussed how the growing collection of products could be confusing to some consumers. They noted that new products found one level down from Google's famously Spartan home page drew far less attention and traffic than they would like.

How to address that problem? Why, by adding new features to these products, of course. Nowhere will that strategy be put to test more than in the integration of YouTube with Google Video. Or will they even choose to integrate them? The short-term answer is no. For now, YouTube, a powerful brand in its own right, will remain independent from Google and Google Video.

Meanwhile, Google Video, which is far behind both MySpace and YouTube in online video, may be suffering from the "Google Sprawl" theory. It's one of countless unrelated offerings found on Google.com. As Brin pointed out recently, "One of the things that is going to have to happen is simplicity. It's one of the reasons that people gravitated to Google initially."

For all its fun new products, 72 percent of those who visit Google.com do so to search the Web, according to Web measurement firm Alexa. Another 10 percent use it for email, while 8 percent search images. Just 3 percent of Google's visitors use Google Video.

Read the whole story at The New York Times »