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Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

I still find it incredible that innovation at Meta and Alphabet is so bad that they haven't built a highly profitable product at either company in their entire histories. They've only ever hit home runs with ad businesses.

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I could write a book about large dysfunctional organizations. Organization’s goal is less important than the goals of influential individuals. And then wild things happen. We will never know what brilliant world changing or good business ideas were buried in the very early stage. It is hard to believe for me from statistics perspective, “that they haven’t built a highly profitable product”.

Edit: because I know some brilliant people from these companies starting really innovative businesses in the past right after quitting these big companies.

Your comment resonates with my experience -- often an idea devoid of substance will materialize from the ground up, and have 10^7 USD poured into it, all because an exec said one day "hey, it would be cool if we had a product that did insert-superficially-cool-gimmick-here" (said product might already exist, or have terrible !/$ or require massive patience to bring any returns, but it's all irrelevant, because an influential individual suggested it).

If you're willing to share some anecdotes, I'd love to read and commiserate.

if your opinion of the most profitable companies of the past 20 years with some of the most widely adopted products in the world is that they are not innovative or able to build profitable products, maybe your definition of profitability, innovation, and product development is a bit off

I've heard before that Google has never created a useful product, period - all the Google products that are worth using - Android, Gmail, formerly Search, ads (for advertisers), Reader - were acquisitions.

i feel like these comments are motivated by anti-tech animus more than the facts.

who did Google acquire gmail from? who did Google acquire Search from?

I think it goes to my earlier point that they're so massive now that they need to ship huge bets to move the needle even a little bit. Gmail and Search both are valid, but to an earlier point are now decades old. Both of these businesses have used inorganic growth for their needle movers - the acquisitions that changed the game for them: Meta was Whatsapp and Instagram; Google was Youtube and DoubleClick.

Search isn't profitable. Their ad business is, and both of those together are their original product. What big successes have they built since?

Gmail is widely used, but is it profitable? Last I checked, their office suite and cloud business were rolled into a single item in their 10K, so it was impossible to tell.

1. I was responding to parent who said all of these products were acquisitions.

2. Big difference between not being profitable and not being able to tell if it is profitable because they do not split their earnings finely. My guess is Pixel is profitable

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