But in general you're right.
Most real enterprise still happens on Office, and lots of consumers happy give Apple $100/year for iCloud.
Cloud services - aren't they basically 3rd behind AMZN/MSFT now, by A LOT? They are basically competing for 3rd against IBM/Oracle/etc, and some quarters they are #4.
"Someone, somewhere, might want to do this, so let's put it in" is obviously what's happened with Office for 30 years now.
"Simple things should be simple. Complicated things should be possible."
turns into
"Everything is possible, but nothing is simple."
There seems to be a theme that the user should learn to use the software via experimentation. To me, that too often results in too much clicking, and when finally I do see I take notes, i.e., document some of the software.
Maybe like Zuck they are / were a one trick pony. Perhaps becoming a multi billionaire is not proof that you can invent and monetize something anytime anywhere in any industry on demand.
Apple / Microsoft just take what they are good at to move into adjacent spaces in consumer/office tech. Apple has made some failed forays into corporate while Microsoft has not done terrible well in consumer other than gaming and maintaining their existing Windows base.
I wonder if Apple leaks about stupid stuff we never see like their car and their AR is just to put other less well disciplined firms onto the trail of expensive dead ends.
If you think of automakers and their "concept car" approach in which they present beautiful improbable vehicles they never ship.. Apple seems to LEAK "concept cars" they never ever preview, while Google goes all-in trying to actually ship a "concept car" no one wants, like Google glass.
Apple is the result of judicious application of the word "no". Google looks like a lot of "yes" with weak knees that quickly turn into "no".
I still don't understand what Google's strategy is in almost any space - messaging, social, home automation, audio, AR/VR, other than "yes... actually, no".
> I still don't understand what Google's strategy is in almost any space
Not just you. The "strategy" is "ambitious product manager creates a new 'vision', sells it, gets promoted, then quickly moves on to something else."
I kind of don't agree there. Apple really only officially announces, demos and talks about products they have to sell you right now.
About the only vaporware I can remember from them in the last decade was that stupid dual charging puck thing they just quietly walked back from.
The only released & quietly abandoned product in recent memory would be the iPod Hi-Fi dock boombox thing.
So when Apple announces something I'm 99% confident it will make it will be released within days/weeks. And when it is released, I'm 95% confident the product line will exist in 5 years.
Google, for me, those numbers are like 70% & 20%. Which is why I rarely waste my time to look at anything new from them. Odds are its either not something I need, or if I need it.. won't be long for this world, so why bother.
I think they clearly feed rumors to journalists about stuff that is further back in the development pipeline, to the point that the conspirational minded might think its to throw off competitor from the right course..
ChatGPT/AI is overhyped, just like full self driving was five years ago. It can do stuff, write articles, code etc. until people realize that what it spits out is useful stuff mixed with made up gibberish.
Obviously GSuite does far more than iCloud, and yet..
So far the code I've seen is the same level of word salad as its text writing. I gave it some really easy ones that it responded back with 1-liners that would produce runtime errors, let alone actually produce correct result. I find it interesting since its really just synethesizing new content from existing content it has trained on, yet it produced simple one-liners that were wrong.
Lorem ipsum.
Bell Labs produced a lot of interesting stuff with their monopoly profits. Apple R&D seems to come up with lots of interesting new product lines.
GOOG bought Nest and managed to become an also-ran in home automation.
GOOG other bets might produce something with Waymo, but when.. all this autonomous car stuff is continuously 5 more years, every year. That's about the closest they've come so far, no?
Not doing this has the potential for Google to miss the next technology trend, potentially crashing Google completely.
That being said, I completely agree with you on a different note. "Professional" spectator sports in schools and higher education. In my opinion, it should be completely banned. Every single such initiative distracts from a school's or university's core mission. It does not matter if each dollar they spent on it makes back ninety cents or two dollars. It is still a distraction that everyone has to do because everyone else is doing it.
I think Walter is right that spin-off is the right strategy, and (not very well known) Xerox actually did do that with a lot of PARC innovations. Just not with computers.
Oh, they definitely tried, and still try. The problem is the same as many large companies: they want a new trick as lucrative as the old trick, and there aren't any.