Why has Alphabet hit the panic button? Only Google can answer that question | John Naughton

What enabled the company to get away with that mixture of creativity, fumbling and indirection, obviously, was that it was always rolling in money. The mighty cash pump of its search engine and associated ad business has dependably provided revenues of $100bn-plus a year since 2017 for the enrichment of its shareholders. With that kind of income you can afford to make a lot of mistakes, especially when you own the search engine that has a near monopoly of the market in most parts of the non-communist world.