[bad_user]

     politics are more important than sound ideas 
     that are good for the business

The problem in big corporations is that there's lots of voices and lots of opinions floating around. You can't really distinguish signal from noise unless you have some kind of hierarchy.

Google cannot be different in that regard. They can't work with a flat organization in which Joe Sixpack has the same credibility as an early employee -- they are too big for that.

The only way such a corporation can improve (over the rest) is to build that hierarchy based on better metrics than the rest, to avoid situations in which big responsibilities fall on complete morons that can kiss ass. Such a corporation would also need to maintain the number of layers to a minimum.

Politics in big corporations are inevitable, which isn't necessarily bad, it's just a different environment than in a startup.