Blackberry’s highest revenue quarters were around 2010. Three years after the iPhone was introduced. Profits are a trailing indicator. But even if you don’t buy that, Google’s net income was down last quarter. Revenue was up but traffic acquisition costs were up even more.

What if Apple had stuck to just selling iPods in 2007? Just like Blackberry, more iPods were sold in 2007 than ever before - the same year the iPhone was introduced.

What if Netflix had kept shipping DVDs or more recently didn’t invest in its own content years before other providers started pulling theirs?

>What if Apple had stuck to just selling iPods in 2007? Just like Blackberry, more iPods were sold in 2008 than ever before - the same year the iPhone was introduced.

Sure, but how are those things relevant? Those are strategic decisions, not decisions made by developers -- and don't concern what we're discussing, if the devs they hire are good for the company.

If somebody at Google C-level decided "let's close down Search and Ads, and just make kitchen juicers" their profits would also tank.

But that's not related to if the devs they hire are good for them. Unless their profit is hampered by dev output (and not one of the other reasons it can go down), their devs are fine for them.

Who do you think gets promoted within Google what are their incentives? If engineers slowly move up the ranks based on the same culture and incentives - creating products that are soon abandoned. The entire culture of Google is not conducive to the diversification they need as ad sales become less profitable.

The culture is shaped from the leadership. There's no requirement a company needs to promote developers to strategic thinking positions.

There isn’t a requirement but from the outside it looks like that’s what’s happening.

Making money is one metric. How about diversified revenue stream? Do you think they should be concerned about that?

They probably should. But it's not the concern of their developers.