Google's problem isn't size. It's their poor product management.
Language Servers could be seen as innovative I guess but they weren’t the first to attempt this sort of thing. It’s just other solutions didn’t have the weight of Microsoft to gain wider adoption.
None of this is a criticism of VSCode though. Something can be really good without being an innovation.
2014: Kubernetes
2015: TensorFlow
2017: Flutter, Transformer
Those are some big gaps. It looks like Google is in the position Microsoft was in for so long right down to being dependent on a cash cow (their ad network) and lock-in (Workspace). They've rested on those laurels for so long they forgot how to innovate. The difference is Microsoft realized they were on the path to irrelevance and started working on it years ago. Google just realized there's a threat to their dominance, and that threat is moving faster than anything that challenged Microsoft. LLMs are making leaps measured in weeks and months.
Google Tables (2020) could be amazing, but who's going to risk it with their reputation for shuttering new things once the people responsible have been promoted? Think about your list: it's all open source. Nobody's trying new Google stuff unless they know it can be forked.
Google Tables was an experiment, but…
> but who’s going to risk it with their reputation for shuttering new things once the people responsible have been promoted?
…its been declared a success that will be moved to a GCP product. How often has GCP cancelled products?
Sundar might end up being looked back on as the Ballmer of Google - the leader who wouldn’t take risks in order to protect the golden goose (geese in the case of MSFT)
Google's problem was deciding to go all-in on advertising as essentially the only revenue source for the entire company. Worse, as others have noted, this revenue source has the side effect of cheapening and distorting their main claim to fame (i.e., search).
Apple and Microsoft both have numerous revenue-generating products. Google basically just has ads (all the other stuff they have is a rounding error).
Now, Google has had other products that could have become revenue streams, but they have a terrible history of killing those products off. They've overtaken Oracle as the place where good products go to die.
If they don't get the advertising people on a leash, I don't see Google winding up anywhere good over the next decade or so.
But I’m pretty sure they won’t manage to remain among the top 10 in the next 5-10 years.
When the iPhone was announced they were rich and in a powerful position, strong teams, brand loyalty, sales teams all over the world, very good relationship with telcos...
And yet, it was already too late.
The HN crowd is a good predictor for search popularity.
Where pivots work is something like Amazon and AWS where internally Amazon already did IT at a large scale incredibly cheaply, so they figured out how to sell it.
They didn't do that though because retail was collapsing, they just saw another opportunity.
Large corporations are similar, both in that they don't respond like deliberate individuals anymore but rather a reactive swarm, and in that they typically only pivot successfully from a position of strength/opportunity ... when facing adversity they more often fail in their pivot and die (usually get acquired).
They are too large to be innovative. Internally they are paralyzed by processes, management, and burned-out programmers who had ideals a few years ago and now are tired of the internal system.
But Google is a rich company that can buy innovative startups and acquires innovative technology whenever they want.
I think it will be key for their survival.