I suppose it may be that technical excellence 
    has never been economically viable

Probably more like:

1. It's generally orthogonal to economic viability

2. ...unless you have such a lack of technical excellence that it actively sinks the company because you can't execute at all

> technical excellence has never been economically viable

I think Google search would like to have a word with you.

I think the technical excellence was mostly a side issue there. What really mattered was that they made a better product. I'm sure there were companies that were just as technically excellent but not as focused on value delivery.

Technology presumably played a prominent role in making the product what it was

Technology always does for technology products. But my point is that pursuing technological excellence as product goal often leads to unsuccessful products.

Google could have -- and probably would have -- failed if not for Google Ads. The great search results drove people to use their product, but it didn't actually earn them money directly.

You can have the best product on the market and fail, and you can have a terrible one, yet succeed. Google has as much business acumen as they do technical chops, and that's why they are such a success. Same with MS and Apple.

Back in the day altavista was superior for search but it was a loss leader. It was designed to sell DEC. I cohabitated some space with Lycos but they couldn’t profit. I think Google executed really well, even to their surprise in hindsight.

I'm lost, you're saying because their product has a monetization strategy that it doesn't count somehow? By that logic, we've reduced the statement I'm replying to into the tautology "cool products with no monetization strategy aren't monetized". Doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Edit: I guess if we want to limit it to cool technologies that are directly monetizable, the ford motor company of the early 20th century (or maybe Tesla) is a better example? It's just as silly a statement either way.

I'm just saying that technical excellence is orthogonal to how much money a product makes.

There is a ton of shit software out there that makes buckets of money, and lots of well designed, well executed products never make it off the ground. So you can't just focus on good engineering and expect clients to line up out there door.