It's interesting to compare Apple and Google. Talent-wise, Apple has always been a "front-end" focused company, and they've now had several fiascos when they've started to get into "back-end"/cloud stuff (this, iCloud privacy leak, etc...)

In contrast, similarly Google had been a "back-end" focused company, and their first few versions of Android were horrible and clunky compared to iOS (but they've improved a lot).