I don't think people at Google have a problem innovating or understanding product/market fit. Rather, they have 100,000 employees (think about that for a second, how long it would take to count that many people), and not everyone's project is a good idea. That doesn't mean people don't try hard, it just means that there isn't necessarily a business just because they want there to be.
I think the problem is simply that it's too disorganized with that many people. I used to work on Google Fiber, and something that our customers complained about was that they couldn't upload files to Google Drive at 1Gbps. That wasn't our fault, we were happy to route data at that speed, and we had the peering capacity with Google to support it. (Different ASNs!) The reality was, we identified performance problems with Google Drive, and they simply didn't care. They had other stuff to worry about; only one city in the US had 1Gbps Internet at the time, but they still didn't have 100% of the docs/file sharing market (hi Dropbox), so they were like "it's not a priority" and worked on something that would actually make them money instead. I get it, but it never felt good. That's what's sad about companies with such a large scope; supporting your own company's initiative is rarely the right business.
The reason I like small companies is because if there was jrockway Fiber and jrockway Drive, obviously they would work perfectly together. I would simply not sleep a few nights to make it happen. But at big companies, that's not a thing, and it really confuses people that imagine the brand name means something. (I have similar complaints about calling shitty Android tablets "Chromebooks", when they didn't run Chrome OS. The Chrome OS team was a level above Android in terms of technical excellence, so it just felt bad to have some bug-ridden third-party tablet ruin the brand name like that. But, money. I'm sure people bought them, hated them, and still use Chrome instead of Firefox. But it always makes me a little sad.)
I think Apple shows that it’s not really an inevitable problem with scale - they largely make products that stick around and are well integrated with each other while being huge in scale and scope.
IMO from the outside the problem with Google seems to be a lack of saying ‘no’ to people - they start so many different offerings without enough/any cohesion, bring stuff to market quite fast, then seemingly strip resources away as soon as they have gone live if the product isn’t instantly an overnight success.
Are you sure? I used to manage a department with over 100 Apple devices. Too many issues with sync on iCloud, iCal, keynote(etc). Sure works fine for 1-4 users (family). Even in hn people use fastmail, google maps in iPhone. There are so few suggestion to people move to apple email offering. People with Apple devices primarily use Google products.
I didn't claim they made perfect products - but they do make products that tend to stick around and work well with each other.
I don't use iCloud with Keynote myself, but those sort of sync issues always happen in multiuser apps that also allow offline editing (e.g. I get the same conflicts in O365 with Powerpoint because they are inevitable if you are allowing offline editing).
Apple will lock you out of email with no recourse just like Google, hence no suggestion to move to apple email offering. The point is to use your own domain, and use a business that cares about serving email.
Larry Page said he is worried because of Google was and is doing too many things. But they simply have to do it because their cash pile is so big that it can't just hang out in bank for decades.
Google Fiber was a good way to spend the cash, but it seemed like it wasn't 10x-y enough. Drag a cable to someone's house; 1 house gets Internet. Not the sort of business silicon valley likes, despite the extreme profitability potential.
I think the problem is simply that it's too disorganized with that many people. I used to work on Google Fiber, and something that our customers complained about was that they couldn't upload files to Google Drive at 1Gbps. That wasn't our fault, we were happy to route data at that speed, and we had the peering capacity with Google to support it. (Different ASNs!) The reality was, we identified performance problems with Google Drive, and they simply didn't care. They had other stuff to worry about; only one city in the US had 1Gbps Internet at the time, but they still didn't have 100% of the docs/file sharing market (hi Dropbox), so they were like "it's not a priority" and worked on something that would actually make them money instead. I get it, but it never felt good. That's what's sad about companies with such a large scope; supporting your own company's initiative is rarely the right business.
The reason I like small companies is because if there was jrockway Fiber and jrockway Drive, obviously they would work perfectly together. I would simply not sleep a few nights to make it happen. But at big companies, that's not a thing, and it really confuses people that imagine the brand name means something. (I have similar complaints about calling shitty Android tablets "Chromebooks", when they didn't run Chrome OS. The Chrome OS team was a level above Android in terms of technical excellence, so it just felt bad to have some bug-ridden third-party tablet ruin the brand name like that. But, money. I'm sure people bought them, hated them, and still use Chrome instead of Firefox. But it always makes me a little sad.)