They haven't failed. They have a huge body of identified individuals that they can sell to advertisers, efficiently and economically harvested.
Oh, they failed at individual user service? What farmer is concerned about an individual cabbage? It would cost way to much to get down off the truck and carefully retrieve the few units that rolled off the truck.
I believe what the OP is saying here is "failure" occurred not on a strategic corporate level, but on a computer-science-algorithm-geek level. He hasn't disclose his full name, so we cannot fully judge, but how would you react if "Joe Smith" came out as a false positive?
Of all the crazy things we're hearing about Google lately, failure on an algorithmic level may be the last thing we expect.
Then again, maybe the name is indeed more subtle than the OP seems to think...
And I'm saying that the algorithm is imperfect by design, and accepted as such, because perfection would cost too much in computing and human resources.
I'm sure cabbage truck designers pay a lot of attention to the cabbage loss rate... Look how much effort was put into the design of shipping containers.
> What farmer is concerned about an individual cabbage?
What a great analogy! We don't think twice about the farmer leaving a few cabbages out in the field, but we get all up in arms when we realize that we are that cabbage.
Oh, they failed at individual user service? What farmer is concerned about an individual cabbage? It would cost way to much to get down off the truck and carefully retrieve the few units that rolled off the truck.
There is absolutely no failure here. None.