[xoogler2004]

Yes. A handful remain. But the next big thing will come from those who yearn to be what Google had and lost. Jeff Dean jokes aside, no one person or group made Google great. It was the combined optimism and output of thousands of brilliant and supportive Googlers with imperfect but good enough leadership. Don’t deify any one person or leader, but if you can see the potential in any company’s ambition, thinking, and culture - it’s going to be worth the ride.

[vl]

But this is the problem, it’s not this place anymore. Unlimited money corrupt absolutely. At some moment you just look at all these projects and they are moat to defend ads/search and napalm any even remote competition. With such priorities comes different kind of moral. On top of that Google sucks at efficient organization management and product management and just masks it with money.

[nicoburns]

It could be again though. Microsoft has already been through this hell and come out the other side. Google could too, although I suspect that it will require a similar change of leadership.

[enumjorge]

It wasn’t just a change in leadership, Microsoft also had an existential crisis. Apple, Google and Amazon threatened to make Microsoft irrelevant and the leadership at the time didn’t seem to know how to respond. I don’t think Google has reached that level of desperation yet, and it might need to before it can turn things around.

[oblio]

Yeah, but Microsoft reinvented itself a few times already. They started as a BASIC runtime vendor, switched to an office software suite vendor, then to an OS vendor and now to a cloud service provider.

Plus Microsoft was quite diversified very early on, about the time they started selling Office. Even now, they're the most diversified Big Tech regarding revenue, except for maybe Amazon.