>Out of this list of 6 major Earth-shaking products only 3 came from Google itself. YouTube, Android, and Maps were all acquisitions.
They tried to compete with YouTube, it didn't work out but hey we have deep pocket, let's buy them. Successful investment because they bought YouTube for $2bn and last year YouTube generated $30bn in revenue. All done and lifted to sky by Google. Android was pre-emptive acquisition against Microsoft and its mobile Windows OS and its search engine Bing. Today Android is the most used OS in the world and it comes with Google apps preinstalled. Also all done by Google because as far as I understood, they built modern Android OS from the ground up with the Linux kernel ofc. I'm not sure about Maps but I bet there was also some long term vision/strategy there as well. You don't have to innovate all the time if you have strong core business and deep pocket for acquisitions, innovation happens elsewhere.
Also turning acquisitions into successful businesses and money making machines is a difficult task. Not every company can do it and some companies even go bankrupt because of acquisitions that gone bad.
>Take for example the recent and total failure of Stadia - they sunk truckloads of money into developing the underlying technology, which is legitimately impressive. And then they slapped a substandard (let's be honest, less than substandard) go-to-market strategy around it. And after it predictably floundered they walked away from the thing entirely.
Stadia was too early in the game, something like Altavista to Google. Cloud gaming market needs to mature and eventually some successful cloud gaming company will pop up. I also don't think they really cared that much about cloud gaming because let's be honest they jumped on the bandwagon of cloud gaming just like they are jumping now on LLMs hype.
>Or for something more currently topical - Google literally invented LLMs but failed to productize it. They put in the money and failed to get the result where another company did.
Too early to judge. We will see in the next couple of years.
They tried to compete with YouTube, it didn't work out but hey we have deep pocket, let's buy them. Successful investment because they bought YouTube for $2bn and last year YouTube generated $30bn in revenue. All done and lifted to sky by Google. Android was pre-emptive acquisition against Microsoft and its mobile Windows OS and its search engine Bing. Today Android is the most used OS in the world and it comes with Google apps preinstalled. Also all done by Google because as far as I understood, they built modern Android OS from the ground up with the Linux kernel ofc. I'm not sure about Maps but I bet there was also some long term vision/strategy there as well. You don't have to innovate all the time if you have strong core business and deep pocket for acquisitions, innovation happens elsewhere.
Also turning acquisitions into successful businesses and money making machines is a difficult task. Not every company can do it and some companies even go bankrupt because of acquisitions that gone bad.
>Take for example the recent and total failure of Stadia - they sunk truckloads of money into developing the underlying technology, which is legitimately impressive. And then they slapped a substandard (let's be honest, less than substandard) go-to-market strategy around it. And after it predictably floundered they walked away from the thing entirely.
Stadia was too early in the game, something like Altavista to Google. Cloud gaming market needs to mature and eventually some successful cloud gaming company will pop up. I also don't think they really cared that much about cloud gaming because let's be honest they jumped on the bandwagon of cloud gaming just like they are jumping now on LLMs hype.
>Or for something more currently topical - Google literally invented LLMs but failed to productize it. They put in the money and failed to get the result where another company did.
Too early to judge. We will see in the next couple of years.