Google has had so many opportunities and yet has achieved so little in terms of VR and AR. They had google glass ffs! Now FB has achieved much more (with the go, quest, quest 2, and the now the rayban glasses) with a much smaller team.
Google are institutionally incapable of entering new markets.
Their current top-level leadership lack any vision and are content to maximize existing revenue streams.
Engineers working on new products all seem to end up treating their projects merely as demonstrations of why they should get a promotion or pay rise, once that's achieved the projects languish in a permanent state of beta or 'experiment'
I was going to disagree, but then I tried to think of a market Google has successfully entered in the last five years and I couldn’t come up with anything. For sure it’s not game streaming (Stadia).
I don't know how you're calibrated for what is significant enough to count. Could you give a few examples from comparable companies? So successful new markets entered by Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Facebook or Netflix in the last five years.
I wasn't sure these were all in the last five years, but when I checked the dates, they mostly are:
- Microsoft: Visual Studio Code (2015), acquired GitHub - getting deep into dev tools outside the Windows market
- Apple: Apple Watch (2015) - wearable health tech
- Amazon: original TV and movies, grocery delivery, acquired Whole Foods (2017)
- Facebook: acquired Instagram (2012) and WhatsApp (2014), Oculus VR
- Netflix: original feature films (e.g. Roma, 2018)
You may not consider all those to be new markets; e.g. Netflix is still pretty much just doing streaming video as far as I'm aware. But it was still seen as a big deal when they started doing original TV shows (House of Cards) and then "proper" original movies.
Edit to add: Google: AI tools & infrastructure? I don't know enough to judge if they're making a big impact there.
This is 2021. Basically everything you listed was older than your own five year threshold (Amazon was in the grocery delivery business since 2007!), or acquisitions rather than in-house product innovations.
And how is vscode a major new market?
Anyway, applying your criteria fairly to also Google, why wouldn't e.g. Fitbit, Nest, Pixel phones, Kubernetes, TPUs, YouTube Premium, Flight search, and Meet count?
The truth is that google project are dead is by now a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nobody will build a company, which is relying on google frameworks and APIs beyond adtech.
It's not that bad yet. During the worst days of Microsoft, there was no products that wasn't bad or weren't actively being made worse: Vista, Office with the ribbon toolbar, Silverlight, internet explorer.
Today you might argue that Google is doing that to Chrome (3rd party cookies), YouTube, Search (AMP) but we don't actively hate using Google products yet.
Besides, I feel Google cloud/workplace people seem to have a good product vision.
Office with Ribbon was clearly the right decision. I absolutely despised the menu hell that preceeded it (minus the fact that hotkeys worked a lot better). The ribbon has since been adopted by non MS tools as well, and I'm happier for it.
Also, Windows Phone 7 came out under Ballmer, and it was So. Much. Better. than either iOS or Android at the time. A keyboard that had proper autocorrection, an OS that could run blazing fast on absoulte rubbish specs and a cohesive design (that wasn't skeumorphic).
Ballmer wasn't a god, but this idea that he had this anti-midas touch is clearly bunk.
Google Glass wasn't AR, it had no tracking at all. It's closer to WearOS than anything.
Same for the FB Rayban glasses that don't even have a screen, yet are categorized as AR, and the video ad even pretends to project 3D objects in your scene.
This sets fake expectations for the public, which can hurt its reputation later
It’s obvious that fb glasses are the first gen and that they are planning on iterating quickly on this. I’m guessing we’ll see the real AR stuff in a year.
