>Google has poor product strategy overall. The company tends to swing for a lot of home-runs but structures these endeavors poorly.
I wouldn't say so; I mean they like to experiment a lot but their product strategy is good in the long term e.g. Google Search, Google Mail, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Chrome, Android etc. If 5 experiments fail and 1 succeeds and brings billions of dollars in revenue that's win in their book and in my book too.
Basically what Google is doing is building its family of apps to capture more attention and sell more ads. The same thing Facebook does with its family of apps e.g. Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. The goal is to capture as much attention as they can and then sell ads because that's what their business model is all about. Zuck even tried to acquire Twitter back in the day plus Snapchat as well. I doubt he liked the products or the people behind it, he just wanted to get rid of competition which was stealing attention or screen time from his family of apps. The same thing is with Google, that's why they are constantly pushing new apps and services (to gain market share and user attention and then to push ads).
> "Google Search, Google Mail, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Chrome, Android etc."
This is a vindication of Google's M&A department and an indictment of Google's actual product orgs. Out of this list of 6 major Earth-shaking products only 3 came from Google itself. YouTube, Android, and Maps were all acquisitions.
And of the homegrown successes the last one of note (Chrome) was released 15 years ago. In other words: Google has been completely unable to produce a mega-hit product for 15 years by itself.
> "If 5 experiments fail and 1 succeeds and brings billions of dollars in revenue that's win in their book and in my book too."
Yes, and this is how all other tech companies operate as well, the problem is that Google experiments incompetently.
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.
Meanwhile on the other side of the fence Microsoft developed basically the same product, but with a better go-to-market strategy has now carved out a niche for themselves in streaming gaming.
Both companies experimented, one got the product to stick, the other flailed around before declaring the experiment a failure - even though within the competitive landscape it was obviously viable.
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.
The list goes on and on. The claims of "see what sticks" is a superficial mantra and its practitioners often forget that how you go about experimentation affects your odds of success. Google has IMO one of the worst experimentation processes (or really just what other companies call product strategy) in BigTech.
Google has taken the notion that you can swing at multiple balls that are tossed your way and generalized it to mean that one doesn't have to be any good at hitting the ball, because given a sufficient large N pitches you're gonna get a hit anyway. This is poor business strategy and it's showing.
>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.
I wouldn't say so; I mean they like to experiment a lot but their product strategy is good in the long term e.g. Google Search, Google Mail, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Chrome, Android etc. If 5 experiments fail and 1 succeeds and brings billions of dollars in revenue that's win in their book and in my book too.
Basically what Google is doing is building its family of apps to capture more attention and sell more ads. The same thing Facebook does with its family of apps e.g. Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. The goal is to capture as much attention as they can and then sell ads because that's what their business model is all about. Zuck even tried to acquire Twitter back in the day plus Snapchat as well. I doubt he liked the products or the people behind it, he just wanted to get rid of competition which was stealing attention or screen time from his family of apps. The same thing is with Google, that's why they are constantly pushing new apps and services (to gain market share and user attention and then to push ads).