If you look at the details, I would lay the blame on Ghemawat and Jeff Dean and their insistence on using C++ for everything. Nobody could argue against them, even VPs.
When YouTube joined Google, their engineers were shocked to find that Google engineers were writing 1000s of lines of server side C++ code, that could be accomplished in 100s of lines of python code. Which explained why YouTube was able to move a lot faster and pump out features, while Google video was struggling to keep up.
It was not the leetcode engineers, but Dean and Ghemawat insisting on C++ only on the server. Its still true today. Go might be making inroads now.
When YouTube joined Google, their engineers were shocked to find that Google engineers were writing 1000s of lines of server side C++ code, that could be accomplished in 100s of lines of python code. Which explained why YouTube was able to move a lot faster and pump out features, while Google video was struggling to keep up.
It was not the leetcode engineers, but Dean and Ghemawat insisting on C++ only on the server. Its still true today. Go might be making inroads now.