It's been an interesting year for Google.
Not content with dominating search, it's gone after everything from desktop operating systems to your TV - and while some of its ideas have been inspired, it's seen almost as many turkeys as the late Bernard Matthews.
Here are ten reasons we loved Google this year, and ten things that made us go "hmmmm".
HIGH: Android Tablets
They may be off to a shaky start, but once the kinks in products such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab have been ironed out Android tablets are going to annoy Steve Jobs immensely. That can only be a good thing.
LOW: Google TV
We understand the idea, we really do, but anyone who looks at a TV remote control and shouts "Aha! We'll stick a keyboard on it!" doesn't really understand TV very much. It's barely out and Google TV already looks shaky: US broadcasters are blocking Google TV from showing their services.
HIGH: Google Googles
The arrival of Google's visual search system on the iPhone earlier this year was a real eye-opener, no pun intended: it does something enormously clever exceptionally well. Visual search isn't ready for the mainstream just yet but Goggles gives us a peek into the mobile future.
LOW: Google's accountants
It's perfectly legal, but the news that Google's UK operation moves its money through Ireland to avoid tax caused plenty of controversy in 2011. It's a common tactic among high-tech companies, but Google's numbers are particularly big: the Sunday Times reports that Google avoided nearly half a billion pounds in Corporation Tax in 2008 alone.
HIGH: Android phones
Android is a genuine success story, a worthy rival to Apple's iPhone, iPod and iPad ecosystem that delivers an excellent mobile OS across a range of decent devices. The current version, dubbed Froyo, has seen sales of Android handsets soar. If only the mobile phone networks would stop stuffing crapware and unwanted customisations into every handset Android would be pretty much perfect.
LOW: iAds
If Google thought it was going to rake in all the cash from smartphone ads Steve Jobs had an unhappy surprise: iAds, Apple's own advertising platform for iOS devices. In typical Apple style iAds concentrates on the biggest, most profitable bits of the advertising market, leaving the scraps for other firms such as Google to fight over.
HIGH: Google Boutiques
A kind of cross between ASOS.com and an online Grazia, Google's Boutiques.com (it's a beta, inevitably) has attracted positive word of mouth since its launch last month. Unusually good-looking for a Google property, the site hopes to reinvent online shopping. It won't, but once its range expands and it reaches outside the US it could be a nice little earner.
LOW: Google Buzz
Along with the now-defunct Google Wave, Buzz is case study in how not to launch a social network. Google Buzz was automatically rolled out to Gmail users and used your email history to find connections between you and others. Unfortunately many of us send emails to and receive messages from people we can't bloody stand, and Buzz was soon generating headlines for bringing women and abusive exes together without asking first. It still exists, but it's hardly the Facebook killer some thought it would be.
HIGH: Google Translate for Animals
No, it wasn't real - but our first reaction to this April Fool wasn't "Oh god, how unfunny" but "Wow, how did they manage that?" That means one of two things: we hold Google engineers in very high esteem, or your correspondent is a dumbass. The beatboxing Google Translate made us laugh too.
LOW: Google Music
Reports that a Google Music shop/service is ready to launch are about as reliable as Bono's claims that the next U2 album will be brilliant: we'd like to believe but we always end up disappointed. The long-anticipated store looks set to miss its rumoured late-2010 launch, although Billboard reports that when the service finally does turn up it'll offer a cloud-based streaming service, a download shop and social networking features.
