Larry and Sergei decided they are not interested in the business anymore. That's probably why Google has failed to innovate much lately. How great would Tesla or SpaceX be without Elon? Companies without the founders become too cautious and status quo oriented.
When was the last time Google really innovated in a useful product and when they did stop being involved? From what I can tell Google has ridden on the coattails of Search Advertising for much much longer than they were uninvolved. Even Google's more public attempts at innovation are toys rather than useful products.
Google always figures out how to scale products to millions and millions of users e.g. Search, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Android. But I agree with you, they are not really innovating. I would say they are scaling software in order to make it useful for mass use.
That's basically how most successful large companies function. Acquire, optimize and scale. The specific areas they optimize and scale on differs by company.
But Google is so huge that they are only satisfied if they serve hundreds of millions or billions of users. For example if you have SaaS company you would be very happy to serve hundreds or thousands of customers but if your business model is advertising like Google's is then you indeed need millions and billions of users. Your motives and incentives change when you grow big and sometimes an average customer suffers. In this case people who loved Stadia in particular are left for dead because Stadia's growth didn't satisfy Google's apetite.
This may be part of the problem. Google was founded by algorithm nerds, and that's now part of the DNA of the company. Apple (Tesla/Starlink/etc) was founded upon vision - what could the future look like? How do I make that happen today? - and then, somehow, to pare that back to something that's economically viable in a reasonable time frame.
That said, taking existing problems and trying to better apply algorithms to make a better product is still a thing in AI space though - and even here plenty of start ups are taking the lead.
Google tends to take on problems that have high technical complexity, potential wide user base and extremely low marginal cost per user and monetizable via ads. And they detest manual/field operational work and don't have the institutional muscle to do fast incremental iterative product development. These are good predictors of what product of theirs will succeed vs fail.
Within high technical complexity space, they differ in significant ways with Apple or Tesla – they don't have organizational mechanisms to do deep vertically integrated problem solutioning. Even when they have academically much superior AI tech, their ability to productize those capabilities is slow and less effective due to how cross-organization collaboration works.
On the business side, they don't have a business team really. There's no MBAs scheming new pricing or bundling models nor are there people wanting to chase/beat market competitors. So, whenever they do SKU based pricing or subscription based pricing, they tend to get it less right than, say, Microsoft.
I agree with what you're saying, and I think you've said more accurately and with more detail, what I was trying to convey.
Edit: One thing to add... Google's history of 'solving highly technical problems' has really been more around scaling infrastructure, with their notable successful products being Google search, Maps, Gmail, and YouTube - with Android being an exception that rule if you'd call that a 'product'. Maps and Google assistance have some technical aspects, but nothing really out of the grasp of a modern startup. Technical ability for SaaS companies isn't really the moat it used to be.
It’s pretty interesting actually you can see exactly where Elon is focusing based on what’s going on at each company. The fact that Tesla has failed to output a new car or really innovate much lately, and spacex appears to be stuck in a morass of engine troubles for their latest big rockets, tells you how much he’s taken his eye off the ball.
> The fact that Tesla has failed to output a new car or really innovate much lately
They literally turned into a battery company with their own batteries, their own chemistry and their own end to end manufacturing process. They are making state of the art batteries when only 5 years ago this company had never even made single high volume car.
You can like or dislike FSD but it is innovative.
In terms of manufacturing, things like Gigapress is now getting copied all over the car industry.
Innovation is not just new products.
And in capital intensive business, scale itself requires innovation.
And they are doing this while having 30% growth every year with exploding profits at the same time. After 10 years when people were screaming about how EV wouldn't ever be profitable.
> spacex appears to be stuck in a morass of engine troubles for their latest big rockets
What? SpaceX is currently reaching an incredibly high operational cadence. That requires innovation.
SpaceX is launching Starlink sats with laser communication and deploying it large scale. They are producing incredibly advanced antenna technology as consumer electronics.
The Raptor engine is the most advanced rocket engine in human history and they are on their second major iteration building them as fast as very few rocket engine in history have ever been produced. They are regularly doing full duration test of these engines. Currently its not really the engines that is holding them back.
Claiming that being a little bit late on building the by far the most advanced rocket system in human history is taking his eye of the ball is pretty absurd.
The Gigapress is an Italian innovation though, and the Italians built it because they understood that it could be incredibly useful, not because there was a custom order.
Tesla were early adopters by making use of them, but not innovators.
> Tesla were early adopters by making use of them, but not innovators.
There are two versions of the Gigapress history going around. In one version the idea came to the Idra CEO in a dream, while in the other version Elon gave multiple die casting manufacturers a call and got a hard no from everyone, expect for Idra who gave him a ‘maybe’.
Whichever it it is not that important in my view. What is undisputed is that Tesla put their money where their mouth is and took a real money bet on this new unproven technology early on. That is as much innovation as actually coming up with the machine and idea yourself.
Edit: to add to my point about innovation, from what I understand, no car company has ever used die casted parts in structural components due to concerns about internal stresses resulting from the die cast process. Normally this requires expensive post treatments but Tesla developed a custom alloy that makes this post treatment unnecessary. I am a bit light on details; someone with a metallurgy or structural engineering background pls chime in.
As I understand it Idra already had the idea for large presses and understood their potential. The demands Tesla had may still have been difficult to realize. Consequently the stories are in some sense reconcilable.
Structural die-casting has been a trend in the automotive industry, having started before the Gigapress. One article on this, from 2018, is https://www.spotlightmetal.com/opportunities-for-die-casting... and in that you see an analysis of the economic benefits, even though it's an article for public consumption.
The article itself, back in 2018, mentions cars already using structural die-casting and basically forecasts structural die-casting becoming a more typical manufacturing method.
Tesla specifically came to them and asked them to developed a machine to their specifications, financed and developed the product and they are getting virtually all the machines the company can produce.
Also its a part of company from China operating in Italy.
These machines are also continuously improved in prosecution at Tesla and that knowlage is flowing back to the company. The machines deployed in Texas are already an improvement over those in California. There is a lot around the core machine that needs to be improved as well.
It's an Italian company that was very recently bought by a Chinese company.
My understanding is that they saw the usefulness of these machines quite early and were developing them in this direction and that they had already produced 4000 tonne presses of this general type. Now it's at 6000 and 8000 tonnes.
Customers are needed to make use of good ideas-- you can't take them otherwise, but the innovation is the work the Italians did.
Yeah that company had no other costumers that were considering 6000+ machines. Tesla put down the money and the internal engineering to prove out that using huge casting as a structural member for the car was viable and then worked with a supplier to design the exact machines they needed.
Machines that like still wouldn't exist today had Tesla not done the necessary investment.
There is the machine and then the application of the machine to an actual production process.
Tesla may also be unique in having a strong need for machines of this kind, which in a way, attempt to avoid assembling of complex metal parts. If the other manufacturers have that down, then their need for very large components of this kind is lower.
It's like Germany and its heavy presses, during WWII. Lack of manpower, or in this case, something else that is wrong, leads to an player going for the most complete realization of that is easier and has major advantages.
No its not. You are misinformed or you are buying into some twitter non-sense.
Yes, Tesla is buying batteries from Panasonic. They are also buying batteries from LQ and CATL. Nobody questions that.
In addition to that Tesla has its totally own production process and chemistries. These are not shared with LG, CATL or Panasonic. Its own fully owned battery factory and research facility in California. They are currently building a battery plan in Austin and in Berlin, these are fully owned and operated Tesla plants.
These plants have their own manufacturing processes developed in-house. They even built the machines them selves. A lot of this is done in Germany in a former well known German supplier that Tesla bought outright like 5 years ago. They also bought a company in Canada that makes the battery filling machines and pumps in Canada.
If you still think we are in 2014 and Tesla is just being supplied by Panasonic, you have not been paying attention.
