However brilliant, my donkey Google is not without past fleas.

Launched in 2002, Google Answers was a response to the relatively successful Yahoo! Answer.  Unlike Yahoo! Answers, askers in Google’s programme had to pay anywhere between $2 and $200 for an answer. The site soon descended into nonsense questions and Chuck Norris jokes, costing around $3 a pop. It is easy to see how such a site could lose its brief novelty and Google Answers was shut down in 2006.

Google Wave surfed onto the scene in 2009, generating a lot of buzz. The idea behind the site was to combine email with social networking and content creation and collaboration. Invitations to become a beta tester of the service were widely sought after and even sold on eBay. Many people thought it was going to be a Facebook killer. It was not.  A variety of technical blunders and seemingly nonsensical features kept Google Wave at low tide. For instance, for whatever reason, early users could not send email from their Wave account.  Though they generated millions of subscribers, they ended with few active users and, in 2010, shut down the project in hopes of creating a more dedicated social network to compete with Facebook.

Founded by Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert in 2000, Dodgeball was acquired by Google in 20005. The mobile social networking site allowed users to text in their location and Dodgeball would text them back if they had a friend in the area. One of the main uses of Dodgeball at the time was passively aggressively avoiding annoying co-worker’s locations. Though a promising idea, Dodgeball was a failure. At the time, there was not enough hardware that could support Dodgeball for it to reach a critical mass of subscribers. Crowley left Google to start Foursquare, a very successful social network founded on similar principles. Dodgeball was retired in 2005 to be replaced with Google Latitude, another failure.

Started in 2006 and based in Finland, Jaiku was a microblogging platform like Twitter.  Jaiku was acquired by Google in 2007. Jaiku was stunted by poorly implemented integration with Google and there are rumours of internal conflict. Jaiku was shut down in 2012 after losing most of its subscriber base to Twitter in what is known as the ‘Great Jaiku Migration’.

Launched in 2010 in a similar manner to Google Wave, Google Buzz was in integrated platform for social networking built into users’ Google accounts. Designed to revolutionarily connect aspects of users online identity, Google Buzz was a failure. Among other things, Buzz would often publish supposedly private communications and was even used by governments like those of Iran and China to find dissidents. Google Buzz was shut down in 2011 in order to focus on Google+.

Google+, rolled out in 2011, is Google’s latest attempt to bring social networking to the Googlers of the world. Built into people’s Gmail profile, Google+ allows users to share webpages, post status updates and follow people. In a few words, Google+ is heading the same way as Google Wave. Despite mandatory registration by Gmail’s 450 million active users, Google+ only has a tenth of that, compared to Facebook’s 750 million.

As you can see, there is a theme to these failures. Google cannot seem to do social networking. I personally really don’t want to have a social networking profile built into my Google account. On Facebook, I can log in, post a funny status and log out. I am, however, always logged in to Google. My web searches are private as are my emails and navigation requests.  To me, Google is halfway between work and play. Like my donkey, it goes everywhere with me and knows my darkest secrets. It’s a good thing donkeys don’t talk because they could reveal a lot of embarrassing information.

Google does have a lot of know-how in site development, as evidenced by their numerous successes like Gmail, Google Drive and YouTube, to name a few. If they want to develop a successful social network, they should create a discrete website that is not tied to my Google profile.

What Google should do is focus on ways to enhance their core experience of searches. Perhaps they could find success by more tightly integrating their massively successful Android mobile operating system with the hardware of their phones. A Google-powered competitor to Apple’s digital assistant Siri could be very appealing indeed…

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> The Motley Fool owns shares in Google.

Like Jay-Z, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL.US) had humble beginnings, but is now extremely successful and has been for quite some time, defending its castle from the mages at Google and dragons at Samsung to become the largest company on earth, with a present market capitalisation of around $460bn.  But what magic Apple juice runs through its moat to make it so successful?

For perspective, Apple only makes 7% of its revenue on iTunes and the App Store. 60% of their revenue comes from iPhone and iPad sales, while the remaining revenue comprised sales from Mac computers and accessories.

Although Apple recently invested $100m into a US manufacturing plant, most of its devices are built by multiple contractors in Asia. In order to become a shiny new iPad Mini, a device must pass through the hands of companies like Foxconn, Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics and even competitor Samsung. It’s a well-known fact that these original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are not exclusive to Apple and most likely built at least part of the device you’re reading this on. It follows that hardware, or at least manufacturing, is not what differentiates Apple from the competition seeing as anyone with a dollar and a dream has access to their sourcing.  

Apple does not make a lot of money on software. It does, however, pump a lot of money into proprietary software development. Why? Because that makes its devices more appealing. A glossy, well stocked App Store and Intuitive iTunes make for an appealing user experience with its exclusive devices, where it makes most of its money. Unique to Apple is the level of hardware to software integration in which each operating system and official app is 100% optimised for an Apple device. This allows for much simpler development of software less bugs caused by hardware discrepancies.

Apple software faces intense competition. If you were to search ‘Windows vs OSX’ or ‘Android vs IOS’, you would come away slightly traumatised by the intensity of the opinions of some people on the matter. I’m not going to try to tell you to buy either one, but I am going to tell you that there are pros and cons to both. Neither is perfect and neither is the end of mankind, as some forums would have you believe. That being said, Windows and Android are both dominant in their respective fields, and steep competition caused by various hardware companies push the price of a mid-range Windows PC or Android smartphone below what you would pay for an iPhone or MacBook.

Apple fans are known by many names: fanboys and sheeple are just a couple that come to mind. Indeed, the launch of a new iPhone can sometimes seem akin to the launch of a blockbuster movie title, with zealots lining streets to get their hands on that smooth Brazilian aluminium iPhone 5. Apple offers customers many opportunities to buy its products, with its many fine retail establishments lined with ‘Geniuses’ ready to go beyond the call of duty to ensure that you too can play Angry Birds.

In this Fool’s opinion, Apple’s moat is exclusivity. Taken individually, each aspect of an Apple product is not all that impressive. Its software is slick and its devices are well built, but they are in the same league with other top-tier manufacturers — and more expensive to boot.  The exclusive combination is what matters.

Apple distances itself from other consumer electronics companies because no one else can offer its proprietary software. Apple is the one and only Apple. Samsung and HTC have to compete with a slew of other Android manufacturers. The level of fandom that Apple has achieved is telling of their success as it indicates that many buyers view an Apple purchase as a special experience, not just another phone purchase.

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> The Motley Fool owns shares in Apple.