The M1 is kinda innovative but Apple did “just buy companies”.

Self-driving cars, from the Google self-driving car project, which was later renamed Waymo, kinda seems like a big deal to me.

These companies are always innovating. Google doesn't just say "Our ad recommendation system is good enough, lets just go into maintenence mode for a year." No. They constantly are trying to improve their models, switch to a better architecture, and innovate to try and eke out a few more percentage points of conversions.

They havent innovated on anything of significance in decades. They just sit on their cash crops and buy up startups.