If GCP was its own company it would almost be a Fortune 50 company on its own. Youtube would be a Fortune 100 company. That seems a lot more successful than most software companies.
Meta on the other hand, really just has ads.
Meta on the other hand, really just has ads.
GCP makes more revenue than Oracle, which is in the 96th spot. Also YouTube was 2x Paramount revenue in 2025.
Again, I am not meaning this as a knock on their strategy. It is valid and is producing real results. I just don't think their unified IDE is a meaningful contributor to it. The equivalent of boots on the ground is far more of a contributor there.
I had similar complaints about AWS back in the day. It wasn't a lack of ML offering in AWS that made Amazon Photos less useful than Google's photo offering. Despite what some internal folks would say.
I don't believe any of those companies have as many billion dollar successes as Google. They aren't the only company to do this, but they certainly do it at an unprecedented scale.
My contention would be that none of those narratives is a lie. But none would be that useful on their own, either.