So you couldn't propose just a new antenna, you had to propose using an entirely different spectrum with entirely different rules and an entirely different platform architecture where voice service was one of many options rather than the main option. You don't get to propose re-inventing the phone, you have to re-invent telecommunications. One of those that got out of the door when I was there was the Google "wave" project. Its vision was so big it missed the fact that people just wanted Slack[1].
Bottom line is that competition within a structure is good, its something that lots of organizations have applied successfully. Google's style, when I was there, was never structured enough to head toward anything. It always went all directions at once, leaving the organization with a net zero momentum in any direction.
[1] Yes they are nearly a decade different in time frame, but as a 'dogfood' wave user and then later outside of Google it was pretty clear the "win" was the IRC replacement, none of the vision stuff was getting much traction but it was the way to go if you're group wanted to figure out which cafe to go to lunch at that day.
Sounds like this was used as a bludgeon for attacking competitors.
Bottom line is that competition within a structure is good, its something that lots of organizations have applied successfully. Google's style, when I was there, was never structured enough to head toward anything. It always went all directions at once, leaving the organization with a net zero momentum in any direction.
My experience with such competition, is that groups actually tend to undermine each other instead of pulling together with cohesive effort. Here, the lowered cost of transactions within a company can allow other groups within a company to act as gatekeepers -- otherwise "enemy" in-company groups can be penalized with higher (outside company) transaction costs for getting things done. This is especially true when project budgets are made with in-company costs in mind.
Google is famously data driven (even when it hurts) and has taken a lot of criticism (justified in my opinion) about not being able to create any new business outside of search and search advertising. I saw, and commented on, the Alphabet re-org as a way to get better visibility into the data coming from the organization. Spend vs revenue. Robots aren't carrying their weight? Toss them over. Making cell phones too hard? Sell it off.
If you work in companies like this long enough you begin to recognize that the organization can constrain what products you can even attempt to build. When the Sun "Voyager" (aka the 'portable') came out we joked that Sun could build any computer it wanted to, as long as you didn't mind it looking like a workstation. A partner Tadpole had built an actual laptop. But the Sun hardware engineering organization couldn't get there from a clean sheet of paper.
For that reason alone it is critical that Google keep re-organizing until they find a formula that works for them.