I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that the mistake Google made was failing to recognize and focus on its core competencies. In ads and search, everything is scalable, statistical, and returns are decoupled from investment. You hire a few really smart people, and have them blow everyone else away.
It worked.
They should have looked for more businesses like that. Maps, gmail, etc. all did pretty well too. Even Youtube, despite playing whack-a-mole with demonetizing or removing channels with millions of subscribers, does well enough. There were plenty more businesses like that to diversify to.
Then Google brought that same mindset to things which required customer service (which doesn't scale), reliability (which isn't statistical in the same way as ads and search), and other domains, hired a ton of mediocre people to do it, and it seems like a bit of a dumpster fire right now.