I agree on Google. They created an important step forwrad in search, I use them as a reference only to point out how hard it is to maintain that innovation process.

I also agree that incremental improvements provide value.

I clearly believe that much of what is hyped as innovation is not, it is me too or recycled ideas. It is a broad brush, I admit, the exceptions, as pointed out by others, seem to me to support the point.

that said, a couple of comments.

for the record, google made their fortune through a simple but important insight about searching documents for relevance to a query, and by finding pragmatic, effective solutions to a variety of problems having to do with scale.

they are in a kind of “hey, me too” mode now but that’s not what made them what they are.

really game-changing innovation happens when it happens, and is hard to predict. most times, innovations happen as solutions to specific problems that exist in the here-and-now.

because it’s driven by issues presented by, and occurs in the context of, existing technologies and practices, innovations are by nature most often incremental. and quite often, there’s real value to be found there.

I have only browsed through the Vertica website, but like Wolfram Alpha, I do find it intriguing.

If you’re looking for something genuinely novel, take a look at Vertica, a commercially successful column store relational database.

I doubt any technology will be sufficient to convince you: anything new will depend on and be related to technology that came before it so you’ll always be able to claim that it is not very innovative.