Once upon a time, Google was a company that specialized in search and advertising.  Now, it's tossing out advanced mobile phones and requesting the right to buy and sell energy.  Still, several financial analysts think these not-entirely-conventional moves are a good idea.

Sharon Gaudin spoke to Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group, Ezra Gottheil of Technology Business Research, and Dan Olds of the Gabriel Consulting Group.  All three individuals saw potential upsides to Google branching out.  It might do extremely well in the new markets, or at least, manage to sell a few more ads.

Enderle even argued that moving on might be necessary for Google, stating, "Ultimately search isn't sustainable.  Google search could become irrelevant.  You eventually could have specialized search providers or Google search could become part of something else and just fade into the background."

Anyway, the risk that Google will perform poorly in its new endeavors was viewed as tolerable by the group.  A corporate giant with a market share of around 65 percent and a market cap of about $190 billion can afford a misstep or two, after all.

On the subject of financial performance, here's one other thing worth noting: Google's stock is up 0.99 percent at the moment, so its recent mobile- and energy-related announcements haven't exactly caused investors to run away.

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