[hos234]

"but when you have billion user products, some people are always going to be pissed at you"

The problem with this narrative (which has been the official line for almost 7-8 years now) is it doesn't cause exaptation or adaptation. It is good enough to hold on to, if the goal is stagnation (which is what has happened with Search - you can point at things like wolframalpha, alpha go, stackexchange, quora, wikipedia, elasticsearch etc etc and ask why if the goal was to organize the worlds info, these things failed to develop internally - Similarly with Youtube - why did they missed being netflix or twitch, how did they not become the default platform for disney). The answer is the Scale has worked against that goal. So you stagnate.

The initial goal was to scale globally. That goal was achieved. After that new goals had to be defined. That did not happen because its hard to define achievable goals at that scale. The only default goal was empire defense - i.e. hold on to scale by hook or crook. For what? Well no great answer to that has been found. Which is hinting that global scale is counter productive to innovation whether technical or moral.

Its kind of like a football team winning the game and then staying on the pitch. Not playing any new games or restarting play. Then saying but guys we won leave us alone now.

I don't blame Google. But I expect Google to lead not to react and be defensive. And to do that the narrative requires honesty.

[ddalex]

> Which is hinting that global scale is counter productive to innovation

I'd say not Global Scale per se, but achieving own goals without further goals to work towards. I.E you've achieved everything there is to achieve, what can do you do more?

Bill Gates reinvented himself by tackling humanitarian causes. Googlers set up further missions, e.g. self driving cars or health improvement, but those seem unimpressive comparing to world dominance.