ing form or simple form ?

What's the difference of using make sure/making sure in the following sentences? which one is better?why? I mean when we should use ing form and when simple form?



Their first priority is "making sure" the people who search Google can get the best and most relevant results. It is not that you get the best deal on clicks.

what we can do is "make sure" that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that’s not making anybody’s mom better

Their meaning is the same. Syntactically, though, they differ. You just have to phrase the sentence differently depending on which one you use.

I'm not a native English speaker, so please take my arguments with a grain of salt.

I think that, in the second sentence, no other form can be used but the bare infinitive, "make sure" (some people can also use "to make sure" but I don't think it is correct). The reason for that is the structure of the sentence itself - the "do" after "can" is what calls for "make" not "making". The sentence can be rephrased in this way without changing the form of its elements:

We can make sure that at least...

In the first case, though, the noun "priority" determines the form of the rest of the sentence. That is, I believe, it flags that the rest of the sentence should be a noun phrase:

What is their first priority? Making sure the people...

I also think that in this case the form "to make sure" would work just as well and the meaning would be almost the same. The form "making" implies a prolonged, ongoing activity. While the infinitive form "to make" better describes a one-time action.

<<The form "making" implies a prolonged, ongoing activity. While the infinitive form "to make" better describes a one-time action.>>

No.

Nope.
And I know a lot about 'prolonged, ongoing activity' as well as about 'one-time action'.

<<what we can do is "make sure" that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that’s not making anybody’s mom better >>

The reason why the second sentence calls for the inifinitive (i.e. bare infinitive) is because of an *implied/understood* subject pronoun and modal. To byspel, compare the following sentence:


"What we can do is [we can] make sure that..."


This forces the use of "make sure" rather than "making sure".
Hope this helps :)

So when the subject is "implied/understood", it's better to use make sure and when we are to use it at the begining of the sentence, it's better to use "making sure", right?

Any other points ?!