The only thing they have going for them is:

* They have the most popular operating system in the world

* They have the most popular browser in the world

* They have the most popular search engine in the world

* They have the most popular advertising network in the world

* They have the most popular video platform in the world

* They have the most popular mapping software in the world

* They have the third most popular cloud platform in the world

It seems to me that they're doing at least something right

Some devil's advocate:

1) They bought Android - they didn't build it in-house.

2) They bought Double Click - they didn't build it in-house

3) They bought YouTube- they didn't build it in-house

4) Third most popular cloud platform is a bit disingenuous; it's like saying Apple Maps is a top mapping platform: sure, you're kind of right, but the gap at the top is fairly wide.

(You might even make the case that the best parts of Chrome weren't built in-house, but taken from open-source contributions via Chromium, but I'm not sure I quite buy that.)

I think the overarching thesis deserves merit: what was the last in-house built product that became a powerhouse with true sticking power, besides Gmail / Google Apps?

They bought Android at a time when it had 0% market share. They changed direction significantly after the acquisition and grew from 0% to 80% over half a decade and then maintained that position. It was not a foregone conclusion that Android would be dominant after it was acquired. Also, it takes effort and skill to maintain your position in a competitive market, which they've managed for half a decade more.

People seriously underestimate how difficult it is to succeed and continue to succeed.

I mean, youtube, sure (though more the mindshare than the product itself), but what's left of the Android that was acquired? They didn't even have a product at the time so everything they ever released was as part of Google. And Ad Words wasn't an acquisition.

After some amount of time, for most acquisitions this argument becomes silly.

Apple acquired NeXT and PA Semi. And I hear Jony Ive was hired, not grown in a vat in Cupertino. Apple didn't build its hardware, software, or design in house!

Google bought Android 13 years ago, for a reported $50M. The kinds of hardware it runs on and its overall strategy have both evolved massively since then. I think at this point it's a big disingenuous to dismissively say that Android was just an acquisition.

I mean it's kinda true. But they still had to figure out that these were the projects/companies worth buying and afterwards pursuing and advancing them such that they would become the cash-cows they are today.

IMHO the Google Home devices and Chromecast are quite successful.

I admit these are probably not powerhouses on the level of Android, Chrome or YouTube. However it's just not possible to create a powerhouse every 1 or 2 years.

YouTube at least was already well on in that direction - Google had a competing product that was a total flop, and only afterwards did they buy YouTube.

They bought YouTube for a billion dollar - which was back then a crazy number. I still remember all that people arguing (including me) that Google would never make so much money back from YouTube. YouTube even had the reputation for being a huge loss for Google for multiple years.

The YouTube deal was a boardroom backscratch to the Sand Hill Road VCs. YouTube was hemorrhaging money on bandwidth with zero possibility of ever being profitable.

Google Photos ?

Huge cost center. Very difficult to draw a line of monetization between GP and the very hazy "its a value add to Pixel customers, and we can use the photos to train our AIs to get better at object recognition which might have applications in advertisement targeting in the future."

Are they still third in cloud if you don't count Microsoft's Office revenue?

Azure is a different business unit than Office.

Some of those purchased (OS, video, ads), some of those getting considerably worse as years pass (search engine, maps). And don't forget adtech will eventually blow up.

But well, if they can keep buying stuff, then they are okay. It's what Facebook is doing.

GCP is the cleanest cloud platform by far. But it's also the one I know only in theory, whereas I have worked with Azure and AWS enough to seem them fail miserably, so maybe I have a case of rose-tinted glasses.

I have experience with all three of them, indeed Azure fails miserably, AWS is a bit better but I didn't spend much time there. GCP is the most solid one and I had the least troubles there.

I use Azure at work and GCP for personal projects. GCP is by far the cleanest, easiest to work with

I've worked with GCP, and especially Firebase is a fantastic platform.

I haven't experienced this failure with AWS. I've had good experiences with both GCP and AWS, and a handful of terrible experiences with Azure. I don't know your particular use-case, but I end up being clean-up for AWS disasters, and each one's root cause was poor planning and/or execution. Likely the result of an over-ambitious employee or contractor trying to implement by the seat of their pants.

I don't have Azure experience, but I usually look at it at AWS has better marketing people. On the tech side, they'll happily packing an open-source project into something managed. GCP has done some serious engineering for products like Spanner, Bigtable, and Bigquery, but there are gaps in the product offerings.

GCP is worth it for Bigqueet, GKE & AppEngine + world class networking.

Everything else is not as good as AWS offerings.

Even Android is not done right.

- Android J++

- Kotlin, the successor, still faces lots of tooling issues, regarding incremental builds, code completion, thin APKs,...

- NDK users keep being neglected, after 10 years there is still no alternative to manually write JNI boilerplate, handle native libraries, a proper C++ API in the NDK, the ones that exist like Oboe are either plain code dumps on GitHub, or use Blaze, which isn't part of the standard SDK tooling, IDE tools if they get added always feel like an afterthought to their Java/Kotlin counterparts

- Stable support library and Android Studio releases have as much bugs as canary ones

- Android Studio feels like it needs a rendering workstation to work properly

The last two points have escalated so high that they finally created Project Marble to improve the current state of affairs.

OEMs love Android only because it is free beer.

Building performant UIs has become a lost art across the entire industry. As a junior engineer I was given a hard time if any screen did not load in 250ms saying that was the cliff beyond which humans perceive things as slow. Now I have had multiple bugs I filed for a web based tool being too slow (> 30s load times) closed because the tool is working as intended.

Also Google also has two GUI technologies for Android, the original Java based one and Flutter, which replicates the material UI in full.

Which are a sign of political wars within the development groups.

So, Google makes (specifically subcontracts out) the Pixel (but it is their branded device). It definitely is not the most popular Android phone out there.

Google makes the Pixelbook. It is definitely not the "best" laptop when you consider less expensive alternatives, and it is not the best seller.

But, Android would be called a successful strategy.

And, Chromebooks would be called a successful strategy.

What I'm trying to say (and would love to hear comments suggesting otherwise) is that these forays into hardware might just be to guarantee a baseline level of quality for vendors of the products to aspire to. And, in that light, even if the hardware divisions aren't making a dent in the Google's reported revenue, they still serve and were effective in their goals.

These cutbacks are just evidence that Google wants to optimize the way things are done, not evidence that they were failures.

GCP is a different beast, however. :)

The problem with Chromebooks is that they have always been touted as a way to get a computer very cheaply. Years have gone by with the marketing being that Chromebooks are cheap. When you get pixelbooks that are $600 to $1500 people are going to have sticker shock, no matter how great the product is.

The pixel phones on the other hand have been selling better ( in fact grew quite a bit numbers wise as well ). The phone line has a better chance of turning in to the Googles surface line esp. since the marketing around that has been "Its the best camera ever" and people are willing to pay a premium for that.

I bought the Pixelbook (online) for a little less than full price.

I also bought another Chromebook at BestBuy that was ~$250.

I was blown away by another Chromebook that had a 17" screen and was less than $300 at the store. I was overwhelmed by the options (and BestBuy never helps because their employees must be rated on how well they can hide in the store and not how well they can help customers).

There are plenty of options in store and online, most of which hover around the $300 price point, which is very competitive.

If you are buying a Pixelbook you are buying it because you want Linux on it, or the amazing screen, and are calculating that into it. If you want an inexpensive Chromebook, you aren't stymied in that search by price.

Chromebooks are only successful if one constrains the world to the US school system.

Outside that they are even less than the worldwide GNU/Linux desktop market, hardly a measure of success.

That's a good point.

I will say though, being successful in us schools was the precursor to Apple dominance. I'm not saying cause and effect but...

How would Android be called a successful strategy? It came out during the Oracle trial that Android has only made Google $38 billion during its entire existence - less than what the iPhone has made Apple during its last quarter.

> How would Android be called a successful strategy?

The monopoly that Apple does not have on smartphones as a whole, and the consequent constraints on its ability to dictate the functionality of the mobile web, to capture mobile web and app advertising revenue, etc.

That's the success of Android.

Apple would never have had a monopoly selling $700 phones and Apple would never sell low margin $225 phones (the average selling price of Android phone). If anything MS would have been more successful.

> Apple would never have had a monopoly selling $700 phones and Apple would never sell low margin $225 phones (the average selling price of Android phone). If anything MS would have been more successful.

A duopoly between two non-Google vendors (especially if they were effectively two monopolies in distinct market segments) would scarcely have been better for Google than a non-Google monopoly, so even if a low-end smartphone market existed and was substantial without Android, and your perception above in regard to Apple staying out of it without Android is correct, that doesn't materially change the nature of the success of Android for Google.

Without Android, Apple would likely have the vast majority of market share on mobile. Apple would be charging Google even more than they do already (billions) to be the default search engine on safari.

Lots and lots and lots of devices with google services and chrome. That bring ads. That bring money. A lot of money.

Do you think that Oracle's lawyers missed that when they said in court documents that Google made $31B on Android? A number that Google didn't dispute...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-google-lawsuit/ora...

Why would Google have disputed an obvious lowball? They were getting sued...

The first line at your link: "...revenue of about $31 billion and profit of $22 billion..." Again, fake numbers, but wow that's profitable.

Do you really think in discovery in official court documents that Google could get away with having false numbers?

22 billion in profit in almost a decade for having 80% of the market is peanuts.

Google has paid more than that to Apple for being the default search engine on iOS for the same time period.

It's not as if the chart of accounts has a particular account for "this is our profit from screwing over whoever bought the rights to Java". This would always be a judgment call, first from the inherent uncertainty in measuring that if one wanted to measure it correctly, but more importantly from the uncertainty over what can be proved in court. Remember, Oracle had the burden of proof in this situation, and they thought they could prove that the number was at least $22B. Google had no duty to argue the number should have been higher, because even if that duty existed how would it be enforced?

Much of your analysis in this thread suffers from a form of wishful thinking. I suspect you are a fan of "iPhone" devices.

It's not my analysis. It was Oracle's well paid lawyers' analysis. Do you have insight that they didn't have to come up with a more accurate number? I'm sure if you do, Larry Ellison will be glad to hear from you.

Oh yeah Larry will be waiting by the phone; I'll understand if he has to land his S.211 first. This is all fake anyway. None of these big corporate lawsuits are about justice or truth. We copyrighted an API that someone else wrote before they went out of business and we bought the remains, even though there was never an actual copyright notice and after all it's a blooming API? Give me a break. Those brilliant analytical lawyers were too busy pulling everyone's legs (not the jury's!) to dig up any more alleged profits... Oracle don't actually care if the lawsuit ever ends.

Does that include all the data from all the Android devices? I don't think Google could get data on eg. when every shop in the world is busy without Android devices sending them that data. So I'm guessing they have a whole bunch of data they can only get from Android devices that's valuable for their advertising business too.

The Pixel could've been a success if they hadn't sold it at such a high price. They think they are Apple, but they obviously are not.

Google is their own worst enemy in cloud.

They raised pricing on Google Maps and have a reputation for dropping services.

Now they require a $75k third party audit to have an app use Gmail API’s.

Given that 3rd party apps can scrape sensitive data, I'm glad the barrier to entry is high..

You're leaving out their most important product: AdSense.

After that, every other product is just a mechanism to feed the beast including search.