They haven't been good at that, historically. Partly, they are cursed by success: a new business would have to be stunningly lucrative to be more than a roundi

They haven't been good at that, historically. Partly, they are cursed by success: a new business would have to be stunningly lucrative to be more than a rounding error of their current business, it is so incredibly successful. According to the Innovator's Dilemma, they would have to spin out an autonomous unit that could get excited about small wins and shape itself to them. But google doesn't do that - they have all these fun little 'entrepreneurial' projects, but none of them mean anything to google organizationally, because they don't, and virtually can't, impact the bottom line. They're just PR.