They aren't missing that point. They are making the opposite point. Google had a great product at the right time and they executed well. Now it makes billions. All the other stuff is most likely incidental.
How many successful companies do the exact opposite of Google? Have you done any research to determine which company succeeded: in spite of, because of, or no effect, from these models? What about the - surely - hundreds or thousands of companies that failed with Google (or not Google's) model?
Trying to imitate success seems to turn into a cargo cult. For whatever reason people seem to shutoff their brains when talking about this.
Most of the attributes in question (office environment, perks, etc) are just semantics around the product/market. The semantics matter a lot especially when your team is critically dependent on a high-turnover potential staff and require talented smart people to stick with your company, or they need an environment that helps them be creative and think out hard problems.
It's similar to questions of programming language, infrastructure options, etc. They are important supportive aspects to the core business but mostly the core of the business could still operate even if those supportive aspect were mediocre/non-optimal - just not as effectively. On a longer time scale that stuff starts to matter in a highly-competitive market.
Most startups and small businesses don't really have those issues, or at least they aren't critical at that stage of the company when the core business hasn't been figured out. So emulating them at a high cost is a bad idea.
The context of everything is important. Sadly most advice dolled out in business books is extracted and formalized without considering the context of where it worked and why.
>How many successful companies do the exact opposite of Google? Have you done any research to determine which company succeeded: in spite of, because of, or no effect, from these models? What about the - surely - hundreds or thousands of companies that failed with Google (or not Google's) model?
Do you know of any examples offhand? Definitely agree that it's a virtuous cycle of talent -> revenue - > perks -> talent
>Trying to imitate success seems to turn into a cargo cult.
The model of trying to land smart people with perks like kitchens, foosball tables, Aeron chairs and all the rest and hope that they come up with something that makes lots of money was what many companies tried in the first Dot Com boom.
Google didn't suddenly transformed to being Google overnight the day they reached the first $1B.