Organizational structure is a massive influence on any organization's outputs, and seems over and over to be substantially more important than the personal attributes or credentials of the pool of employees. This is discussed by Clay Christensen in the context of disruption tech theory, it's enshrined in hacker lore as Conway's Law, and I'm sure is well known across many other domains.
One could interpret the overall trajectory of Google here as reaching the limits of disruption-capable organizational design. It's likely they hit that limit some years back, and have just reached the point where they've internalized it enough to drop the pretense.
It's not all bad -- there are many things at which large corporate structures excel. They're just not typically the ones that are sought in Silicon Valley.
One could interpret the overall trajectory of Google here as reaching the limits of disruption-capable organizational design. It's likely they hit that limit some years back, and have just reached the point where they've internalized it enough to drop the pretense.
It's not all bad -- there are many things at which large corporate structures excel. They're just not typically the ones that are sought in Silicon Valley.