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What makes you think it was the same people inside Google that did social instead of cloud computing, and that was the choice going through leadership? Google

• dekhn 5y ago
  Well, I worked there at the time and had significant insight into the cloud leadership (and some into the social leadership), it wasn't the same people at all. Basically, Eric Schmidt wanted Google to make an enterprise cloud product years before it did, and saw no point in social, while Larry somehow got conned by Vic Gundotra and a few good PM decks that social was Google's future. Larry never had any interest in cloud computing and even the cloud leadership was skeptical that it could ever present an opportunity worth the small profit margins.
• sangnoir 5y ago
  > Google can walk and chew gum at the same time. As I recall from my outside/user perspective: Google Plus pretty much co-opted the entire organization in an supposed "all hands on deck, existential fight" against Facebook. Every product and feature had to have a "social" layer (including GMail!); YouTube even adopted a "Real Name" policy but still amazingly managed to worsen the comment system. Can you imagine what a similar level of effort on the cloud would have produced? Maybe they wouldn't be a distant #3 in that space today.