Google’s dilemma epitomizes the Innovator’s Paradox: Disrupt search with superior AI, or protect the profit engine funding it? History reveals rare successes in such self-cannibalization: Tencent unleashed WeChat (2011) as an independent team to compete with its own QQ messaging cash cow, with founder Pony Ma accepting near-term revenue loss to capture mobile dominance. Similarly, Netflix’s Reed Hastings terminated DVD subscriptions (2011) at peak profitability ($600M/year) to force users onto streaming, betting everything on an unproven model. Both succeeded through founder-led radicalism – sacrificing immediate gains for existential reinvention. Google, however, lacks this decisive DNA. As a professionally managed corporation, Sundar Pichai faces institutionalized inertia: shareholders demand quarterly profit growth from search ads, while internal bureaucracies resist resource shifts from cash cows to speculative bets. Unlike Tencent/Netflix’s centralized, founder-driven pivots, Google’s consensus-driven structure cannot execute the necessary violence against its own business. Gemini thus remains shackled – deployed defensively within search to “enhance” rather than replace it, ensuring neither disruption nor salvation.