Having read hundreds of these sorts of CEO leaving letters I'm a bit jaded and cynical. If you're interested in what I see when I read that message, I rewrote it[1] in more plain language.
Google demands a lot of its "other bets" companies. Some might say it asks too much. Mostly it seems to me that they want a 'moonshot' company that has the original profitability of search advertising, full stop. And while it would be great for them if they found it, there is a lot to be said for having a bunch of businesses that just make anywhere from a few million to a billion dollars a year in revenue.
I don't know if the attitude has changed since I was there but people creating $20M/year business revenue streams were not considered "successful" back in the day. I found that somewhat self defeating.
Google demands a lot of its "other bets" companies. Some might say it asks too much. Mostly it seems to me that they want a 'moonshot' company that has the original profitability of search advertising, full stop. And while it would be great for them if they found it, there is a lot to be said for having a bunch of businesses that just make anywhere from a few million to a billion dollars a year in revenue.
I don't know if the attitude has changed since I was there but people creating $20M/year business revenue streams were not considered "successful" back in the day. I found that somewhat self defeating.
[1] https://gist.github.com/ChuckM/ff5fc8c800c7fe9160483b68ec45a...