I finished reading Walter Isaacson's bio on Steve Jobs a few months ago and was delighted with the book overall. One of the stories that stood out to me was the final conversation Jobs have with Google CEO, Larry Page. Jobs' advice to the new(ish) Google leader was to focus. He told him to try to do a few things insanely well (I'm paraphrasing). Anybody who has studied what made Apple great knows that it was the result of intense focus on building a few great products, more wood behind fewer arrows. Fast forward to today and it is clear that Page did not heed that advice.
Google is involved with everything from search to enterprise, healthcare to wearables, autonomous vehicles and delivery services, browsers and operating systems. The list could go on. Since finishing the book I've tried to understand how Google is positioned as a company moving forward. Apple is a consumer company, which Google is as well, but their scope obviously extends well beyond smartphones and search. So what is Google?
I think Google is the next generation GE. When put in that context it became easier to understand why they are trying so many different things. And while a vast majority of their revenue still comes from their search business it is not difficult to see Google as a major player in a number of industries in the coming decades. In fact, if you look at GE's business lines and compare them to Google's you can already begin to see some parallels.
I don't think Google will ever create consumer products to match Apple, mainly because that's not they're exclusively focused on doing so. My belief is that an open OS is much harder to control and thus results in an inferior user experience, see here. That isn't to say Google won't continue to mitigate the effects of device fragmentation and improve the consistency and UX of it's devices, I just don't think it will ever be as delightful as a closed ecosystem. I think we can also all be sure that Apple isn't interested in becoming the next GE either.