The point's been better made elsewhere in the thread by now, but: what I mean is Google's always been a "best to market" company (to borrow a phrase from a friend) more than a "first to market" company. That certainly holds true for search itself, anyway; there are lots of exceptions within Google I can think of, but not lots that have been successful.
I will not compare Google and Microsoft, but Microsoft has a long tradition of "coming late to the party and remain the last man standing" i.e. Google has a reason to worry in the long term if Microsoft decided to take search seriously.
