I use several Google products, daily. I also eat food Kraft's foods daily. I also use Comcast every hour of every day of the week. I'm not pining over a job at any of these companies.

How is Google anything more than a well-known consumer brand?

Because Google is probably the most well-known advertising agency on the planet?

They're not much of a consumer brand tbh, but they pull in tens of billions a year creating virtual properties to sell advertising space on.

By that logic, you could also say that McDonald's isn't a restaurant chain, but a real estate company: http://seekingalpha.com/article/73533-mcdonalds-is-a-real-es...

Well, who's Google's customers? People who buy ads, or free search users?

(an aside) One of the startups I worked for years ago, rented a huge office near San Jose, but decided to change directions and hire out of cheaper locales for a while. So we sublet the space out. For a good 2 years this space generated more revenue than the rest of the company and we joked that perhaps we should get into the real estate business. We even had two employees with real estate licenses in 3 states.

I wonder if that's how 42floors got their idea.

One could make a similar argument for just about any large financial, real-estate, or holdings company. Bank of America, General Mills, and General Electric to name a few.

"They're not much of a consumer brand tbh"

People google stuff on bing, tho. So, if you're brand is a verb, in widespread common usage, I'd say it's doing ok. Kinda like Kleenex.

Well, for one they just acquired eight of the worlds best robotics/AI teams. You don't see Kraft trying to bring the singularity nearer.