I recommend reading the Cliff Notes for "The Origin of Wealth" (the full book is just too damn long). Sometimes product designs with a devout following still fail the product market fit test. Trying a bunch of things to see what sticks is a pretty valid strategy, it's what nature does. Steve Jobs would just convince you of your folly for wanting anything but a one button mouse, but Eric, Larry, and Sergey would offer you mice with 1-10 buttons, hover mice, eyeball tracking systems that act as mice, a laser pointer mouse, etc. Each is a small fixed cost and if there's product market fit, the winning variant pays for all the others...
Basically, yes; that is, their strategy is not to avoid taking multiple simultaneous efforts at solving the same broad class of problem, even if it is one where in the long term there is unlikely to be a reason to keep multiple solutions, and they also aren't afraid to take stabs at solving problems where they need a solution to exist but don't strategically need to own the solution.
These strategic choices give them the best chances of having a viable solution either for the market as a supplier or for themselves as a user when they need it, but also makes the number of failed efforts they are going to need to kill higher than it would otherwise be. Or, in short, the strategy creates corpses.
Inside maybe, outside not so much.
I wouldn't rely on anything google does outside Ads (not that I do), GCE and maybe Android.
They have a (somewhat deserved) reputation for destroying services seemingly at random.