Compare their success to failure ratio to Apple, Amazon and Microsoft.
How is Chrome anymore of technical success than other browsers?
As far as Android, it came out in the Oracle trial that it only made about $22 billion in profit during its entire existence and the entire ecosystem is still a mess as far as security and updates compared to Windows - ie where one company controls the operating system and licenses it to other OEMs.
Not to mention that the entire Android market is a profit less race to the bottom for all of the manufacturers.
All that being said, Google still derives almost all of its profit from ads compared to Apple, Microsoft and Amazon who have had far more success in introducing diversified products.
But if Google’s failures can be attributed to a lack of leadership, most of Apple’s current success wasn’t the result of the NeXT acquisition. It was the result of bringing its founder back.
When chrome was new it was extremely innovative with how much space it gave to websites, and also came with orders of magnitude faster javascript. The other browsers then copied Chrome so all of them are now fast and sleek, but back then the difference was huge.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chrome-is-insanely-fast...
Which is disappointing, since Google of ten years ago had a distinctly better search.
Having a HIPPO tell everyone what to do, how to do it and when is not visionary. Letting engineers do what they want and then making money from the ideas is.