"Most of the cost cuts that emerged since then have focused on divisions outside the core internet business, such as drones, wearable devices and other "moonshots."
Google/Alphabet is still doing badly at anything consumer-facing that isn't ad-supported. Not for lack of trying. Google Fiber, Google Express, etc. They've had some success at enterprise apps and cloud services, but they're not the major player in that space. The self-driving car thing is not going as well as expected. Ads are still 94% of Google revenue, and they're probably overstaffed for that business.
Hmm. Do you count Fi, Flights, and Hardware in that category? (Particularly Nest, Home and Pixel).
One could argue that some longer term plan for Home is ads/cross-sell, but let's just focus on whatever the hardware sales turns out to be. I don't think those need to be on the scale of Apple's or Samsung's revenue to be considered as not "doing badly".
Similarly, I assume (but have no knowledge!) that Flights is mostly a referral business. That's not "ads" to me in the same classic sense. That is I've never heard anyone refer to Kayak as "ad-supported".
Google/Alphabet is still doing badly at anything consumer-facing that isn't ad-supported. Not for lack of trying. Google Fiber, Google Express, etc. They've had some success at enterprise apps and cloud services, but they're not the major player in that space. The self-driving car thing is not going as well as expected. Ads are still 94% of Google revenue, and they're probably overstaffed for that business.