I think this is more specific than just the McNamara Fallacy (thanks for the link, I knew of the fallacy but didn't know it's name.) Big tech businesses usually optimize for risk reduction in the core business. The specific untracked metric here is that of competition. Big tech seems to go around it by trying to acquire promising competitors, but with a higher anti-trust appetite in the current administration, that's becoming less effective. And even with huge acquisition offers, it just takes one breakthrough competitor to bring a calcified risk-obsessed big tech company to its knees.