I think moonshot, by definition, means 15+ year timeframe to full realization. Google is a very young company, they just haven't had piles of cash to invest in moonshots for long enough for us to have seen the results. X was founded just 6 years ago, Alphabet was founded just last year!

To be asking 6 years in where are all the moonshot successes already? I think this demonstrates exactly how problematic and pervasive short-term thinking is.

The question to ask is in 50 years, how many different $10B+ revenue streams will Alphabet have?

If we really think this R&D isn't going to pay off, at the scale Alphabet operates, that's almost like losing faith in humanity.

I didn't say moonshots were a bad thing. I just stated the basic standard for collecting a sample of something in a halfway unbiased way.