Internet search. Productivity apps in the clouds. Wireless phones. Phone messages and transcription. High speed fiber optics. A war with Apple. A war with the government of China. Google is stretched too thin.

The company announced today that sales were up 23 percent and profits were up 37 percent but the stock price actually fell 5 percent.

Google needs to be very careful. It is in far more businesses today than Microsoft ever was.

The question is, can Google stay focused — and be excellent — in all of the businesses it is in?

Think about some of the greats in consumer electronics:

• Apple
• Research in Motion
• Amazon.com

All have maintained a laser focus on their core businesses.

What about companies that didn’t stay focused and got into many businesses:

• Microsoft
• Sony
• Dell

These companies all once thrived in their respective categories, but came upon hard times when resources and manpower were put towards many disparate goals. Dell, for example, which dominated computing, got into HDTVs and MP3 players, and hasn’t fully recovered.

Can Google aim a laser on 30 different businesses and focus on all of them at once? If any company can do it, Google can. But the risks are extremely high, and history, along with the odds, are stacked against them.