Whether Google wanted to win or not: Don't kid yourself into believing they _could_ have won even if they had tried. Google has a history of being terribly at executing on product ideas and Google Code never had the same "feel" that Github did. There's a reason Microsoft paid billions for Github. If Google could have created that in-house themselves they would have done it.

Not saying Google tried and failed - they may just have realised that actually winning this was never an option.