One difference I'd point to is that Intel was doing "fine" not committing to future lithography. I put that in quotes because clearly it wasn't a fine plan over the long run, but not spending money on the future is a fine plan in the short/medium term. AMD had been struggling for years and Intel continued to handily beat them. ARM processors weren't a threat at the time either. Intel certainly had the better part of a decade where they weren't committing to future lithography and doing fine.

Before someone says, "but they lost mobile to ARM during that period," lithography isn't why they lost mobile to ARM. Apple was using TSMC's 16nm process in their September 2016 iPhone while Intel started shipping 14nm processors 2 years earlier. Mobile chose ARM when Intel wasn't behind on lithography.

With Google Fiber, not choosing had immediate repercussions. With Intel, the repercussions took the better part of a decade to manifest. Google just decided it didn't really care about the home internet business. No one at Google could say "yea, we're not rolling out wired or wireless home internet and the business is booming." Intel didn't decide that they were exiting the processor business, but their processor business was doing "fine" without this decision being made. Intel could say, "we aren't investing in future lithography and the business is booming anyway. Maybe future lithography is just a big waste of money."

You're correct that not choosing means you lose. However, sometimes it isn't obvious for a while. Google Fiber's lack of decision had obvious, immediate results and you couldn't delude yourself otherwise. Intel could delude itself. Execs could write reports about how they were still ahead of the competition (they were) and how they weren't wasting money on unproven technology. Fast forward a decade and they're not fine, but it took a while for that to manifest.

Plus, if Apple hadn't helped push TSMC forward so much, would Intel be in quite as bad a situation? Qualcomm has been happy to just package together ARM reference designs with their modems and it's really just their poor performance compared to Apple really pushing them forward. While Android users on HN might be buying Snapdragon 8 series processors, the vast majority of Android devices aren't using high-end ARM cores. The vast majority of the market for high-end ARM cores is Apple. If Apple hadn't made a long-term commitment to TSMC for 2016-2021, would TSMC have pushed as hard on EUV? It's a lot easier to invest when you have a guaranteed customer like TSMC had in Apple.

If Apple hadn't pushed performance so strongly, would we have seen as much EUV investment as quickly? It's unlikely it would be pushed by the Android ecosystem where most processors are low-end. TSMC serving Apple meant EUV investment. Once Apple was shipping extremely fast processors, Qualcomm and others wanted to be able to get to at least 50-70% of what Apple was offering (so there were more buyers). Once it was available, AMD could use it to push hard against Intel. Once there were more buyers, Samsung wanted to make sure that its fabrication business was at least in the ballpark.

But if Apple hadn't been focused on taking a strong performance lead, it might have been another 5+ years before Intel's lack of decision came back to haunt it. If it had taken 12-17 years instead of 7-9 years for others to put the screws to Intel, they would have basked in its profits for a long time as its execs were touted as having amazing insight. Of course: you're right. Eventually, Intel would have gotten its comeuppance. But Intel could have pretended it didn't need to invest in the future for a long time. By contrast, when Google didn't make a decision on wireless or wired, that was just the end of expanding that business.