I really tried to come up with a snappy title for this. Like “Google Checks Out” or “Checking Out Google” or even “When Did Google Check Out?”.

Nothing stuck. So I’m stealing Mark Evans’ title.

Another week, another weak Google launch. Another round of “this is an [x] killer!“.

Mark’s got a good point:

Not to dismiss Google Checkout’s features, which seem interesting, but when was the last time Google launched a new service that kicked some serious butt?

And he’s right. And I’ll tell you when the last time Google launched a service that actually “killed” anything.

Ready?

AdSense. And before that? Search.

And that, my friends, is it. Those are Google’s only home runs. While Gmail is great, and forced a minor revolution (UI and disk space), the truth is it didn’t “kill” anything. Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail have both seen their numbers go up, not down. Ditto maps. Great UI, awesome API. But I haven’t seen Mapquest, MapPoint or Yahoo Maps fold. Their usage has gone up. Hell, they even all have features that are better than Google Maps now.

I always hate it when people refer to Google apps as “killers”.

The truth is that while Google has some really great ideas, and incremental innovations, and has really knocked it out of the park with 2 of those innovations… They aren’t the kind of company that has yet managed to “kill” anyone. Even in their 2 standout products. And never a major player like PayPal or Ebay or Microsoft or Yahoo.

Google’s a leech. An innovative leech, but a leech nonetheless. They can’t lead. They can’t develop software that gets mass appeal. And they can’t even innovate beyond their first core of ideas that are more than a decade old.

The fact that nobody’s trounced them is really only a reflection on how easily intimidated the competition has become, not on how great a company Google is.

I mean, to put this in perspective, Google now has 500 times as many PhD’s as they had when they hit their last home run. On a cost-per-kill scale, they’re doing piss-poor. No offence to Google, of course ;-)