I agree; it's fairly unlikely that this is a huge downward turning point for them. I suspect they are keeping an eye on market trends, and basically know they

I agree; it's fairly unlikely that this is a huge downward turning point for them. I suspect they are keeping an eye on market trends, and basically know they are close to untouchable (although it's probably dangerous to play with that quite this severely). That said, I think one core difference to the parallels you drew is that Google is perhaps less diversified (in terms of revenue source) than those companies were, prior to their "pivots".