Google CEO Larry Page

Google is doubling down on some of its most important products as it starts the new year, with CEO Larry Page telling investors today during an investor conference call that focus will be key to the search giant’s success moving forward.

“There’s so many opportunities for Google today, but to make a real impact in the world we need to make hard choices about where to focus our efforts,” said Page, noting that the company has shuttered 12 products and integrated others into existing features. “This means we can double down on the really big bets we’ve made like Android, Chrome, Gmail, display and YouTube.”

Those products are doing extraordinarily well, with Page citing the “mind-boggling” growth of Android (now on more than 250 million devices);  Gmail (now with more than 350 million active users) and Google + (now at more than 90 million users).

In response to a follow-up question by Jeetil Patel of Deutsche Bank Securities, Page said that Google very much will continue to innovate in products outside of its core advertising technology. Here’s what Page, who took over the CEO duties last April, had to say on that matter:

“I didn’t mean to imply in any way that we are stopping innovating. I think we will continue to launch new products in new areas in things that aren’t necessarily advertising supported as we have being doing for a while, and I am very excited about that. But we may not launch hundreds of such things, we may launch a few of those such things for the next few years. We will try to make sure we are more concentrated in our efforts to make sure we are producing really amazing products for our users and for customers that are really well thought out and work really well, and we put a lot of effort into those. But we really have just been concentrating our efforts around our innovation, and making sure that we are doing a really great job on the things that we really care about and that really matter to the world.”

The comments came shortly after Google announced earnings that disappointed Wall Street, with the stock losing more than eight percent of it value in after hours trading.

Previously on GeekWire: Wall Street punishes Google after topping $10 billion in revenue and adding 1,100 employees during Q4

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