All true, but there was another goal of hiring everyone 1/2 capable. Google was stifling competition by sucking up brains/talent. If other companies can’t find talent, they can’t compete with Google. It’s not a bad strategy considering the talent market is relatively small in tech. Better to have a dissatisfied employee slacking than a motivated competitor attacking your moat.
Long term, I see Google as losing relevance. 20 years ago they were revolutionary. Now they’re the electronic yellow pages. Not really that sexy. They never had success innovating into other spaces really. Maybe the phone market, but the device fragmentation design decision bottlenecked them there.
