They have 100,000 employees pretending to work on the past.
They have no leadership at the top. Nobody that can steer the ship to the next land (or even anybody that has a map). Who is actively working at Alphabet that has the authority to kill Google search through self-cannibalization? Absolutely nobody. They're screwed accordingly. It takes an enormous level of authority (think: Steve Jobs) and leadership to even considering intentionally putting at risk a $200 billion sales product. The trick of course is that it's already at great risk.
They don't know what to do, so they're particularly reactive. It has been that way for a long time though, it's just that Google search was never under serious threat previously, so it didn't really matter as a terminal risk if they failed (eg with their social network efforts; their social networks were reactive).
It's somewhat similar to watching Microsoft under Ballmer and how they lacked direction, didn't know what to do, and were too reactive. You can tell when a giant entity like Google is wandering aimlessly.
Alpaca is pretty good though.