Well, we also gotta look at Google's outside incentives, those of being a monopoly. At the end of the day, it's not the most efficient use of resources to innovate internally at a monopoly (better uses include M&A, competitor sabotage, and sales/marketing, which they've of course also done).

Anyways, Google I think has been trying to maintain a semblance of its early culture of innovation so as to attract talent/applicants, to not cause too much internal turmoil, and to make investors think it is still an "innovation" company. Also, because growth comes with bloat and bureaucracy, so may as well have that bloat come up with new products.

Google will never be fixed internally to be its former self or a company centered on innovation because that's just not how monopolies work... Maybe once they capsize (which hopefully they do because monopolies are toxic and anti-competitive), they can once again become an innovator, like with Apple's early capsizing which led to them bringing Steve Jobs back.