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.