Alright, I admit it was not incredibly ground breaking. Reason it impressed was that it was a very small, cheap and simple UI device that showed how to execute an IOT device well. It went on to be very popular and it was obvious from the start that it would be successful. And as far as I understand it was developed internally, not acquired like basically every other google product from the past 20 years.

Google maps was quite impressive, but it was also cobbled together from several acquisitions. In fact, Google Earth Desktop is still basically the same software they bought from Keyhole in 2004.