[mwhitfield]

Thank you for phrasing the comment I came here to make better than I could.

This article (much like a lot of views expressed on this site) mostly just reads as someone jumping from a startup to large-business environment for the first time, and not grokking the very legitimate and unshakable reasons such an org has for being more conservative and process-heavy. Yes, that kind of thing has to be monitored and constantly worked on to ensure it doesn't grow out of control, but some level of bureaucracy is a feature, not a bug, for a large, successful organization. At Google's scale, that "some level" is quite high.

[jukkan]

The author had worked at Microsoft for 12 years before starting the company that Google acquired. So, not only does he have a fair amount of experience from both sides, he's also worked at MS during its "lost decade" i.e. the Ballmer years.

The similarities between what MS was going through then and what Google is now facing is to me the most interesting aspect of the story. Whether you're printing money via OS or search monopoly, it seems like both the direction and timing of what's going to eventually happen to your business are almost inevitable.

MS today is quite different from what it was 10 years ago when the writer left. By getting acquired by Google in 2020, it's almost as he travelled back in time, into another Big Tech company at that same stage of the enterprise lifecycle.