Each one of those 50-odd services could be a full-fledged company on its own with a few hundred or even a few thousand employees (in fact, many of them were). I would even bet that as separate companies, they would add up to a lot more than the estimated 20,000 Google employees.
That is actually a really good example. Look at the competition, Conduit (http://techcrunch.com/2008/01/16/toolbar-company-conduit-rai...), a company that literally has a few hundred employees (150-499 according to Glassdoor). I figure that Google has about the same number as the competition does for each service, so the Chrome team would roughly match Mozilla (~300 employees), the Docs team would match Zoho (~1500 employees), Maps would match MapQuest (~150 employees), etc.
Not to nitpick, but Zoho also has portfolio of several other products including Accounting, CRM, Helpdesk, Network Manager among others. And their total employee strength as you said is ~1500.
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Each one of those 50-odd services could be a full-fledged company on its own with a few hundred or even a few thousand employees (in fact, many of them were). I would even bet that as separate companies, they would add up to a lot more than the estimated 20,000 Google employees.
After reading what you wrote about each one being its own company, then seeing that Google Toolbar still exists, I started thinking:
"We're delivering the next generation in browser toolbar software"
Oh dear god.
That is actually a really good example. Look at the competition, Conduit (http://techcrunch.com/2008/01/16/toolbar-company-conduit-rai...), a company that literally has a few hundred employees (150-499 according to Glassdoor). I figure that Google has about the same number as the competition does for each service, so the Chrome team would roughly match Mozilla (~300 employees), the Docs team would match Zoho (~1500 employees), Maps would match MapQuest (~150 employees), etc.
Not to nitpick, but Zoho also has portfolio of several other products including Accounting, CRM, Helpdesk, Network Manager among others. And their total employee strength as you said is ~1500.