They can't even monopolize the ai effort in their own org. There's a dozen google ai products that all compete with each other (ai studio, firebase studio, opal, Gemini etc).

They have all the potential but have lost direction years ago.

I think they will stay relevant but not dominant, much like the case of Google meet.

> all compete with each other

It's common business practice to set up internal innovation competitions, and blend the best.

> lost direction years ago.

I’ve never thought of Google as having some clear direction short of having dominated with the pagerank search.

It reminds me of people who invented a thing that is ubiquitous and therefore just sits there printing money all their life, but basically every single other thing they’ve done since then has been at abysmal returns on capital (ie, where they would have been better off just not doing anything and putting it in the money market… their contribution was extremely negative), while they delude themselves into what wonderful success they’ve been because the one-shot invention keeps printing money.

One exception might be YouTube, but if I recall the story correctly, Google was going to shut it down too when one guy (I don’t recall now) made a proposal and single-handedly turned it into the powerhouse it now is. But that’s just dumb luck on Google’s part. That guy could have also just as well have been somewhere else at that pivotal point and Google would have killed off YouTube like it has killed off so many other projects because it lacks the actual competence to follow through with things… everything always remains with a sense of being half-baked.

That reminds me of a thing I stumbled upon a while ago now, that technically speaking several of Google’s core offerings are still designated as Beta projects behind the scenes. I’m not sure why exactly, but even if it’s just an oversight of background clutter, that seems symbolic of Google; the disheveled, disorganized, cluttered personality that has not resolved loose ends smothered in decades of other loose ends.