When you say 'big things', I assume you mean things like Google Glasses, Google Driverless Car (does that have a name yet), etc. etc.
Google has always taken these sorts of initiatives, it is a huge part of their corporate structure.
I'm not familiar with these sorts of initiatives or 'big things' at Apple. Can you elaborate?
Microsoft does big things in research, but I don't believe they match the pace of Google, though that could just be perception.
Not every company needs to be doing 'big things'. I suspect we would have said facebook never really did. They just executed brilliantly on a few key not very innovative things, like the news feed, like button, universal sign-in, etc. None of these are big things, but they are what made the company what it is.
