That's an extremely narrow (and imo incorrect) definition of "innovation". Ignoring things (for the purposes of measuring innovation) from the last 5 years like Google Chrome, self-driving cars, street view, knowledge graph, instant search, public transit directions (for which a whole standard for encoding transit directions was created and implemented) etc, simply because they're not new product categories (with the exception of the cars) just seems silly, especially since that measure implies that Apple did one thing 5 years ago and one thing 2 years ago and has spent the rest of their time since doing nothing innovative whatsoever. Choosing a measure that arbitrarily narrow not only undersells Google's achievements, but also Apple's (and Microsoft's), by ignoring all the improvements to products (or new products in existing categories) that are technical and product feats in and of themselves. The parent post was talking about the fact that (in his opinion) Apple has stagnated recently by coasting on the success of their initial product, rather than constantly striving to improve everything they do and come up with new things.

Note that your definition (and even my response) ignores a massive amount of innovation that goes on under the hood; If Google Search (e.g.) used the same algorithm and had the same performance as it did ten years ago, it would be _horrible_ by today's standards, and that's precisely because we've been spoiled (in a good way) by the fact that the algorithm and the infrastructure is constantly improving, not only through small iterative improvements but also through occasional leaps which undeniably fit under the definition of innovation.

I've largely left Microsoft out of my counterexample, but that's only because saying "Google hasn't innovated at all in the last 5 years" is just such incredibly low-hanging fruit. Most of what I said applies to Microsoft as well, albeit perhaps a little less so, given that they were on the tail end of their "lost decade".

>That's an extremely narrow (and imo incorrect) definition of "innovation". Ignoring things (for the purposes of measuring innovation) from the last 5 years like Google Chrome, self-driving cars, street view, knowledge graph, instant search, public transit directions (for which a whole standard for encoding transit directions was created and implemented) etc, simply because they're not new product categories (with the exception of the cars) just seems silly

Well, true I have to count Maps (Earth/Street View) to Google's innovations. It's an important thing that millions use everyday, and that rules it's field.

Chrome, OTOH, is just Apple's webkit work with a sandbox. Not substantially better than either Firefox or Safari. If we count that as innovation, then sure, Apple put out 2 versions of it's OS and several iOS versions with hundreds of new features, the new iMac, etc etc.

As for the glasses and the self-driving cars, when we actually see them in the market I'll count them as innovations. Heck, I'll count them as innovations for Google even if someone else brings them to the market. As it is, they don't amount to much better than vapor(hard)ware. Plus, we know that behind the secrecy veil Apple also has dozens of prototypes and testing products most of which will never see the light of day. If they did a Google or Microsoft, they would have saturated the media with vaporware too.