It sure seems like Google is struggling to invent the future

Earlier this week, Google made some serious cuts to its startup incubator Area 120, cutting half of its projects, according to TechCrunch. The purpose of Area 120 was to give Google employees somewhere to experiment or chase their passion projects, with the hope that they could stumble upon the next Big Idea like Adsense, Gmail, or Google News.

But as the economy has turned, it seems Google may be losing its stomach for big bets and experimentation, instead trying to focus its efforts on what makes money today (or services that it really just has to run despite the fact that they lose money, like Google Cloud). Instead of challenging employees to spend 20 percent of their time building wacky apps, CEO Sundar Pichai says the company needs...

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