[hot_gril]

Microsoft failed to enter the mobile space, yeah. Google fumbled with the Nexus stuff, even though they succeeded with the Android software. But bigger picture, Microsoft was still able to diversify their revenue sources a lot while Google failed to do so.

[robertlagrant]

That's true, although Pixel seems good as a successor, but the big thing Microsoft did was use what they had to get into new markets.

Procuring Azure is a good option for lots of companies because most companies' IT staff know AD and Microsoft in general, and Microsoft's cloud offers them a way to use the same (well, not the same, but it's too late by then) tools to manage their company IT.

I'm not disagreeing with its success, but I do think they had a much simpler journey, as to my understanding a lot of it involved cloudifying their locked-in enterprise customers, rather than diversifying into new markets.

[hot_gril]

What frustrates me about Google is they fumbled in a lot of markets that aren't far from their established ones. Zoom ate their lunch with video chat, and now MS Teams seems to be beating GSuite. Maybe YouTube -> social networking would've been doable, but they botched it with G+. The old Google was only good at facing new technical challenges, not making products. Now that's changing, and I think at least they can make Google Cloud work.

I also don't see anything big Google has leveraged Android for, besides Pixel, which is actually more to cement Android cause they know they don't have enough control with software alone. At least I have decent amount of faith in them pulling that off.