It’s about Google having bad DNA for building standalone products. Google’s true expertise is in big data and algorithms and ranking stuff. That’s what they pr

It’s about Google having bad DNA for building standalone products. Google’s true expertise is in big data and algorithms and ranking stuff. That’s what they prioritize and often hire for. That’s great for building a search engine, but bad for building most kinds of products. As an outsider, to me Google doesn’t prioritize engineers that really get social media or the type of design Google would need to compete in new spaces. (Their design is clean, but boring) Internally, I believe that Google also has a system that keeps anything that competes with their cash cows to the back burner so it’s hard to put institutional momentum into experiments. And in the rare occasion when they do release something interesting, if it doesn’t make a billion dollars it’s small potatoes to Google so they don’t develop the idea further and maintain it.