I'll riff off this and say that even Google in its heyday was strangely uneven from product to product. Some products were amazing, still pretty dang good. Some products were released in a mess, abandoned nearly from the start, or driven into the ground with seemingly very little competence driving them. It always felt like Google had a bit of a darker side lurking as far as just getting basics wrong product to product / team to team.

Ah yes, I too remember Google Wave.