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"Google Search, Google Mail, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Chrome, Android etc."This is a vindication of Google's M&A department and an indictment of Google's actual product orgs. Out of this list of 6 major Earth-shaking products only 3 came from Google itself. YouTube, Android, and Maps were all acquisitions.
And of the homegrown successes the last one of note (Chrome) was released 15 years ago. In other words: Google has been completely unable to produce a mega-hit product for 15 years by itself.
> "If 5 experiments fail and 1 succeeds and brings billions of dollars in revenue that's win in their book and in my book too."
Yes, and this is how all other tech companies operate as well, the problem is that Google experiments incompetently.
Take for example the recent and total failure of Stadia - they sunk truckloads of money into developing the underlying technology, which is legitimately impressive. And then they slapped a substandard (let's be honest, less than substandard) go-to-market strategy around it. And after it predictably floundered they walked away from the thing entirely.
Meanwhile on the other side of the fence Microsoft developed basically the same product, but with a better go-to-market strategy has now carved out a niche for themselves in streaming gaming.
Both companies experimented, one got the product to stick, the other flailed around before declaring the experiment a failure - even though within the competitive landscape it was obviously viable.
Or for something more currently topical - Google literally invented LLMs but failed to productize it. They put in the money and failed to get the result where another company did.
The list goes on and on. The claims of "see what sticks" is a superficial mantra and its practitioners often forget that how you go about experimentation affects your odds of success. Google has IMO one of the worst experimentation processes (or really just what other companies call product strategy) in BigTech.
Google has taken the notion that you can swing at multiple balls that are tossed your way and generalized it to mean that one doesn't have to be any good at hitting the ball, because given a sufficient large N pitches you're gonna get a hit anyway. This is poor business strategy and it's showing.