>Blame the stock market. Once a company has a solid product line in one area that doesn't suck, every publicly traded company is under tremendous pressure to mo

>Blame the stock market. Once a company has a solid product line in one area that doesn't suck, every publicly traded company is under tremendous pressure to move into new markets rather than iterating on previous successes, often to the detriment of preexisting products. First of all, I'm not sure there's any evidence to support your claim that public companies are under pressure to diversify over iterate. Second, public companies have chosen to go public. It doesn't just happen. So, blame them. >lso, if you look at all the big tech companies (American ones at least) over the past 30 years, there's a recurring pattern of a company becoming preposterously successful, then spending a decade or more reaping the benefits of that success while repeatedly throwing money at the wall for different new projects to try and find something else that sticks. In other words, luck is a substantial portion of success.