The "Google Home" may not look like this building, but they sure have enough assets to build an even bigger and better one! Google's recent profits topped expectations, but this is in contrast to the privately held SixApart who owns the blogging software that I do this blog on, TypePad. If you look at what they charge per year for TypePad's services, you can discern that their profits don't come anywhere near to Google's (even with a potential million customers). What they have in common is that they both help bring buyers and sellers together, in my opinion.
I actually visited SixApart's home office in San Francisco in August, 2005. It was nice with a downtown "brick and open ceiling" look. However, I'm sure that SixApart has not had the advertising profit that Google has had. My point is that if you read SixApart's history, you'll see they've come a long way since the Fall of 2001. Their growth has accelerated in the last year, and to quote one of the founder's "we see activity on the service-both reading & writing-that equals services with 100 times the number of users on TypePad."