Years of being one-upped on AI and cracking down on innovation turned the poster child for Silicon Valley cool into a dinosaur.
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The Lede
Chatter about Google's transition from vanguard to dinosaur is hardly new. The company just turned 25 — roughly two centuries in tech years. But the past few years have introduced new troubles: lower tolerance for risk, crackdowns on innovation, layoffs, and a narrative that its famed products like search and Gmail are getting worse. They have supercharged the perception that Google has become the one thing it promised it would never be: boring.
Key Details
- The downstream consequences of Google's graying loom large: a talent exodus, stale products, and an overreliance on its advertising cash cow.
- Indeed, few of Google's notably successful products were launched within the past decade. Plenty have been killed, however, including augmented-reality glasses and a short-lived foray into gaming..
- A job at Google was once seen as a job for life. So news of a plan to cull its workforce by 12,000 people in January 2023 landed with an unexpected thud.