Just because a company is 99% one thing, doesn’t mean that the 1% remaining don’t have moments of real genius. What it does mean however is that when those real genius moments happen, the company isn’t in a good position to capitalize on it (ala Xerox or Kodak mentioned previously, but there are so many more).
Because that's the hallmark of business-minded people being at the helm and not engineers, which has been an issue for Google for a long time: the greatest inventions ever seen will be squandered in terms of the org itself because management can't see beyond the next few quarters and won't invest properly in it.
??? Xerox and Kodak are immortal household names that dominated their niches for decades, what level of "success" would satisfy you? what are you lamenting, that they didn't completely enshittify their products while they were on top and torch their brands to the ground for a little more revenue?
Inventing things is no guarantee of success.