They didn’t lose interest in messaging when they cycled through half a dozen different apps but the problem was they were building products they wanted to exist rather than what users wanted. I’d worry about AI getting similar churn if PMs make their name by launching a new product rather than improving an existing one.
That makes sense framing it as a skepticism about Google Gemini (a single product) rather than their interest in a category (AI).
I'm less worried about them genuinely losing interest then Google outlasting their AI competition and then kneecapping their AI product to protect their cash cow.
The root comment was investor-centric, i.e. if you want to divert some investment towards AI, Alphabet is a smart bet.
Investors got great returns as Google churned messaging platforms, and this will likely be the case ad Google churns through AI products, or even entire architectures.
We did get good returns but that was because other units did very well. It’s not a given but still too likely that they’d botch AI products but still be profitable due to ad sales continuing to grow. I do think AI has better than average chances, though, because it seems to have scared their senior management enough to do their jobs: from outside, everything appears to radiate “this can’t fail” in a way they haven’t had since the 2000s.