This is a sensible-seeming take at first blush, but it doesn't hold up to any scrutiny (or maybe my scrutiny is faulty - you tell me!)
Sundar and many of his executives have certainly read or heard of The Innovator's Dilemma, and I expect they're all moderately paranoid that it will be their downfall.
Also, that's not it. Google has a great ai app called Gemini where they have at various points hosted the top ai image generation model (certainly for speed, and for a while for accuracy) and have innovated with features like deep research
They are monetizing their ai conversations more effectively than OpenAI could dream of via ads and chat in Google search.
They are heavily investing in compute and talent.
When they've added llm results to Google search it has _increased_ engagement and re-engagement.
What part of the competition are they blissfully ignoring?
(I have counter arguments to some of these points, but I would rather hear other people's)
I agree that all of today's CEOs have learned from history and are paranoid about disruption, and I agree that Google is pivoting effectively and will even thrive in the AI era, given their technical and distribution advantages... but I think their revenues and profits and dominance will be much lower than what they are today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47957708
I heard Google search volumes by humans were declining, but I can't find the reference now so may be wrong. It's definitely changing the entire SEO industry.
Are they actually implementing ads in chat yet? I haven't seen an ad in Gemini yet.
Again, the results I've seen is that LLM results in search have resulted in more zero-click searches (as a proportion of all searches), which isn't increasing engagement? But again, I may be wrong, what are you basing your assertion on?
I didn't say they were blissfully ignoring anything. I gave them credit for knowing the situation they're in and doing something about it.
The problem that I was talking about (probably badly getting my point across) is that it's internal conflict and strife that causes the pain here. One part of the company is incentivised on increasing revenue on the existing business. The other part of the company is incentivised on increasing revenue for the new business. But the new business is at the expense of the old business, so it sets up internal conflict where each part of the business tries to protect its own incentives. And Google has always been afflicted with rife internal politics.