[ksplicer]

I don't think it's contradictory. There was an amazing ROI for a long time, so I think it was a very successful strategy early on. It's just clear that as the founders retired and more MBAs got a hold of upper management positions the first thing that happened was that the employee psychological safety was slowly eroded. Did you know that Pichai started his career at Mckinsey? That place is all about making safe choices that erode a companies future to improve short term profits.