One reason why Microsoft was able to execute so fast was that they had nothing to lose in doing so. The entirety of the Bing product and brand is mostly immaterial to the company's bottom line. What better way to try and revitalize it than by taking a huge leap with some hot new tech that is capturing the public imagination? If that leap is successful, you get to open up a huge new line of business and challenge Google. If not, well it just...goes back to being Bing.

For Google – whose entire business is tied up in that one search box – it is a very different equation. Any reduction of consumer confidence in their search engine is an existential threat to the company. Changes have to be rolled out slowly and with an immense amount of deliberation and testing.

Microsoft would be stuck in the same dilemma if, say, someone came up up with a futuristic-looking disruption in the spreadsheet space and Google Sheets was quick to adapt to it.