Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
Google has a fundamental problem with solving challenging issues, especially those in the realm of physical &quot;meat-space&quot;. Really hard problems, problems that might reveal that Google is not omnipotent, where Google might not succeed, Google pulls back from. In areas where Google is, Google dominates the landscape. In all others, Google does not deign to participate. If Google can&#x27;t <i>dominate</i> a market, it is not interested.<p>&gt; <i>Former employees say Page became frustrated with Fiber’s lack of progress. “Larry just thought it wasn’t game-changing enough,” says a former Page adviser. “There’s no flying-saucer shit in laying fiber.”</i><p>The issue with the physical world is that fundamentally, compared to a lot of software or hardware technology, it <i>_is_</i> fairly boring. Boring work is also some of the most important work; the synchronization of traffic lights, the scheduling of flight paths, the minutiae of power line access, these are all boring, <i>important</i> things. A common reaction to boring problems by technologists is to throw computers at them. Build an algorithm to synchronize traffic lights. Build an AI to schedule flight paths more efficiently. I understand these reactions, the impulse to replace existing, less-optimal processes with stronger, more efficient, automated ones. Google does a really great job at automating things, its their core competency. However, automation can&#x27;t solve all problems. You can&#x27;t automate away political processes. You can&#x27;t automate away property rights and fair access to power lines, and contracting construction work. Page clearly feels uncomfortable with this, and so he abandoned Fiber.<p>Honestly I am not sure Page was wrong to abandon Fiber. Google&#x27;s core competency is automation and if they can&#x27;t automate a problem, maybe they <i>shouldn&#x27;t</i> be involved in the space. Or maybe Google should get a new core competency and learn new things. Teaching an old company new tricks is hard though. Very hard. So hard that most companies fail before they can ever adapt. Without being able to solve problems in the physical space, Google is fundamentally &quot;locked-in&quot; to only being able to solve digital problems in the digital world. This is why Google has no physical stores, no physical products (which are not manufactured by someone else - Chromebooks, Pixel, etc do not count. Prototyping is easy. Selling to customers in a retail store is hard). Microsoft had the same problem as Google once. It was hard for Microsoft to learn how to run stores, build its own products; it took Microsoft over a decade. Let&#x27;s hope Google can learn too.