[roenxi]

Google's stereotype is the company that can handle and manage complexity - things like Kubernetes, indexing the internet, etc. They are clumsy at persuading people to use their products and have a patchy history of launching platforms that people want to use. Google+ and Google cloud vs AWS spring to mind, Kubernetes is a good platform but challenging to learn. Chrome is an unusual aberration where they did a great job. Android is maybe also a strong counterexample, not sure what the state of play was there.

But whatever their code quality may be, luring in devs to their API has seen hits and misses.

[wartijn_]

They did a pretty good job in persuading people to use search, adsense, YouTube, Gmail, Maps and a bunch of other products. Singling out a few couple of the less successful ones to claim a trillion dollar company is “clumsy at persuading people to use their products” seems like a pretty bad take.

[roenxi]

You'll note that all the examples you're citing were released more than a decade ago (search wasn't even this century!). And YouTube was an acquisition. They were basically the work of a different Google to the one that is walking around now.

The stereotype of Google back then was very different. People would quote things like "don't be evil".

[fsociety]

The only products you listed which weren’t acquisitions are search and gmail. Search is exactly the problem Google was made to handle and Gmail.. well I don’t love gmail but it is a good enough product I guess?