>>Google will be hard pressed to earn back its investment.
I agree.

If you think about it very few, if any, technical blockbusters (MS, AOL, IBM, Yahoo, etc) have made good investment decisions regarding acquisitions.
On the contrary, their records are fairly lousy. MS spent almost $1billion for Great Plains and another ton on Navision only to have that entire market go on life support. Add what MS has pumped into them and the ROI is a high negative.

It seems that there are savvy investors like Warren Buffet and there are savvy tech managers like the Google guys, Gates, etc and the skills don't seem to fit together in one body very well.

The difference is that Buffet knows his limitations and sticks to his last.