Kubernetes, TensorFlow, and Spanner were not.
OpenStreetMap Foundation, 1.5 FTE.
Street View is the perfect example of this. It still seems like an insane-in-a-good-way product to me after all these years.
It’s probably not semantically wrong to say that these two cases really were/are innovative, but even so, was that really the cause of their success? And is it replicable as a methodology? My gut tells me that a lot of what gets labeled as a massive innovation is really just a market inevitability, and someone got to the right idea first, either by luck or having a single clever differentiating idea.
Really, "innovation" is a matter of hard work, timing, and luck. You need to work hard to ship a product or publish a theory. You need to recognize the opportunity and execute on it at the right time. And you probably need some luck to get your initial boosts. But even after all that, you still need to be mature and capable enough to turn your small golden egg into a golden goose. It's still a long slog from initial hit to resting on your laurels.
Indeed, and this goes back even further in time than you might think. All their best products came from acquisitions: Maps (KeyHole), Android, YouTube, Google Docs. The only truly original Google products that I can think of, other than Search, are GMail and Chrome (which was largely powered by WebKit anyway).
But they do deserve credit for nurturing those products. Maybe that's where their strength lies: in throwing a massive amount of elbow grease and server power at problems that can't be solved any other way. Nobody is innovating their way to a new Web browser or maps platform. Those products need a massive organization behind them. Google seems to have a good formula for keeping these large projects on track. What they've been missing since 2005 is the ability to start a new project from zero.
And you know what? Maybe that kind of innovation is actually almost impossible, like winning the lottery, and it's unrealistic to expect one organization to strike gold more than once, or a handful of times if they're really lucky.
The same pattern is observable at Facebook - they've got one flagship product, an undiversified revenue stream from ads, and a bunch of successful products they acquired. But has Facebook really innovated since their original product?