From a consumer point of view, chat/messaging is probably the most clear example of Google seeming to lack any clear direction. While Apple evolved their SMS app into Messages, through a slow evolution which created consistency for users and has people buying or staying on the iPhone for that alone… Google has released more apps than I can count. Any time someone has a new idea they release a whole new app. This is confusing for users and probably why Android has a bunch of 3rd party apps people use instead of Google dominating with the app they ship.
They screwed it up with Google Wave too. They released an entirely new email app instead of just slowly building those Wave features into Gmail. Imagine if every Gmail to Gmail conversations automatically became a Wave. This would have been great and created a network effect, much like Apple Messages. Instead, Wave failed and we lost everything it had.
Most gigants choose the second obviously. People capable and willing to risk leave the ship. Best choice you are left with is to buy promising startups and try your best not to ruin them. And this is what they do.
Even then in search, Google still owns 90% of the market.
The more interesting question: why did Google shelve their LLM efforts and let themselves become disrupted by OpenAI and others?