Play is expected to be a $3.2 billion a year business in 2014. Where do you set the bar for "a successful product"? $5B/yr? Also I'm not sure if you're also excluding acquisitions from your arbitrary definition, but all the DoubleClick products (DFA/DFP/AdX) were post-IPO and are not even close to the same product as AdSense. Don't mistake "I don't understand what I'm talking about" with "anything that has the letters 'ad' in it must be the same product".
Ok - but accepting this perspective, all validated growth has been growth in advertising. Does the P/E ratio reflect expectations for the further growth of the ad business, or is it speculation that Google can be successful in creating another type of business for which there is no antecedent?
