RE: Focus

So EvHead wrote on his blog:

Both Facebook and Google had early success in (large?) part because of their focus. Google in terms of what they did, Facebook in terms of who could use it.

That success provided both pressure and opportunities to grow in new directions. Expansion is always tricky, and each company has handled it in different ways.

Discuss.

Reminds me of an article from the early 90s about the degree to which tech companies can successfully vertically integrate. For instance, in computers you've got

hardware components
hardware systems (ie, computers)
operating systems
middleware
software (apps)
content


The argument was that companies that tried to go farther than two levels above or below the one that was their core business would struggle. So take IBM. Core business initially was hardware. They also quickly got into components, like hard drives, which made sense for them. And they had to write their own O/S because no one else built the big boxes. Made sense. Same thing with some of the middleware apps, like DB2 (if that could be considered middleware). But look what happened when they tried to do software apps - when they bought Lotus. Notes could be considered a middleware app - it really is just a development environment, not an app. Most companies didn't appreciate that. But the real Lotus apps - 123, WordPro, and Freelance Graphics - are pretty much gone. IBM paid around $3 b for all this stuff, and couldn't make a successful run on Big Bill.

So....If I was Google or Facebook, I'd be thinking about the levels thing. First, what *are* the levels in the webworld? I've seen lists of them before, but I don't have them at hand. Then, what would represent "two steps" in either direction from search?