[rubzah]

This is by far the most likely reason. When you hire top developers, those developers want to work on interesting stuff. If retaining those people is a priority, the middle manager's only option is to smile and nod when they tell him something they'd like to do, or he'll soon find himself without employees, and shortly after without a job.

Just look at all the shit that comes out of Google, not as part of some grand overarching scheme, but because someone thought it would be fun, and more often than not forgotten about a year later.