IMO, it is the attitude to take a leap at difficult and off-the-beaten-path projects ("MoonShots") that sets Google apart from many other large companies.
Are they looking to profit? Sure. Does that mean that profit is the only motive? I don't think so. It takes guts to jump into a totally different area from what a company primarily does.
It is probably an attitude that needs to be powered by the founders themselves. That way, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are appreciable too.
Apple has its strengths, but they don't score well when you look at it from this perspective.
I love Google's "Moon Shots" program, and the ambition. But Google isn't the only company that's going in that direction.
Amazon is one other company that has been pushing beyond its comfort zone since forever. They pursue these different business and go on about without a fuss, without an elaborate PR stunt (apart from PrimeAir).
What Amazon does is take baby-steps but with grander visions. I may be biased since I work for Amazon, but I can clearly the push, the multiple directions and business the company is involved in.
Not long ago, Paul Graham published "Kill Hollywood" [0] which has been taken down in favour of a composite ycombinator.com/rfs.html. You could see that Amazon is already at work on that idea and makes acquisitions to that affect as well (Amazon Games, Amazon Studio, Twitch.tv).
A lot of ideas listed in the "ambitious"[1] category, are semi-implemented by Amazon-- cue 'confirmation bias' ;)
1. A New Search Engine: Amazon Echo / X-Ray for Kindle and Fire
2. Replace Email: I'd say, WhatsApp's done it. Amazon isn't in this business yet.
3. Replace Universities: Kindle/Twitch is a step in the right direction.
4. Internet Drama: Amazon Studio
5. The Next Steve Jobs: Jack Dorsey? Elon Musk? Drew Houston? Jeff Bezos?
6. Bring Back Moore's Law: AWS Lambda, and the other more Modern AWS Services in general.
7. Ongoing Diagnosis: Not in the business yet, but Google is.
>Are they looking to profit? Sure. Does that mean that profit is the only motive? I don't think so. It takes guts to jump into a totally different area from what a company primarily does.
Not that much guts needed, when you have billions at your command. It would be more gutsy if it was a much less rich company doing it. That's not to say that it is a bad thing, though.
Google doesn't leap, which implies commitment. Instead they dally. And it's not yet clear that this sort of dallying can actually produce results. It may even have the opposite effect, e.g. the way Glass ruined the wearables market.
Five years from now the average consumer won't remember anything about the Glass fiasco and wearables will be everywhere. Glass didn't do anything to the wearables market of any consequence, at all. It couldn't have been more irrelevant. The only place it was relevant, for 15 minutes, was in a tiny little echo chamber in California.
In what way has Google not been committed to eg autonomous vehicles or Google Fiber? They've produced amazing results already in both examples. The Google Fiber result alone is astounding and almost single-handedly responsible for the broadband speed boom going on in the US right now.
Is Google committed to either of these? These are basically hobbies: there's no evidence that Google is pushing hard on them. Six years after starting, and they're still pilot programs at best.
These are certainly cool technologies and producing amazing preliminary results. What I am questioning is whether this strategy of dipping their toes in a bunch of different ideas actually works. Google's hope seems to be to throw a bunch of stuff and see what sticks, whereas Apple's approach is to pick a few ideas, and then devote tremendous resources at it until they get it right.
Google thinks that their autonomous vehicles will be ready for broad scale use by 2020, the same year that Elon Musk thinks Tesla will have their autonomous car ready, and the rumored date of the Apple car. So it doesn't seem that their head start allowed them to bring things to market any faster. Maybe Google's offering (in whatever form) will work way way better than its competition, but my guess is they'll be roughly comparable.
And six years on, Google Fiber is only available in a tiny number of municipalities, and has a small fraction of the subscriber base of, say, Verizon Fios. Six years!
I'm an outsider, but I speculate that these types of projects are low pressure. There's no revenues at stake, no expectation of profit, no hard deadlines, and probably no serious threat of cancellation. So it is not surprising that progress is slow. Recall that the literal moon shot - the Apollo program - was a national goal, set by the President, with an explicit deadline.
Are they looking to profit? Sure. Does that mean that profit is the only motive? I don't think so. It takes guts to jump into a totally different area from what a company primarily does.
It is probably an attitude that needs to be powered by the founders themselves. That way, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are appreciable too.
Apple has its strengths, but they don't score well when you look at it from this perspective.