Nevertheless, all three companies he led had engineer-driven management, with the kind of ad-hoc innovation culture typical of engineering companies, before Schmidt, all three became business-focused and narrow-minded after Schmidt. This results in excellent financial returns in the short term, followed by cliff diving.

Is he responsible? One is bad luck, two is coincidence, three is a trend.

P.S. No, I don't think Google will financially collapse. Not while there is no strong competition on the AdWords space. The change in culture is pretty obvious, though.

Google also had the advantage of original founders who remained extremely engaged, and have re-emerged as leadership - founders who are ultra-talented and ambitious engineers. The X Lab gives Google a place to continue bringing in top engineers regardless of what the Mountain View office is like.

> advantage of original founders who remained extremely engaged

I'm skeptical about whether this is true in a straightforward way.

For one thing, most of the complaining about the (relative) decline in engineer-centric culture at Google has happened since, oh, about six months after Larry returned to the CEO position. More wood behind fewer arrows, big push on G+, more shutdowns, more constraints on 20% time, etc. (... although I have no personal experience of Google under Schmidt)

For another thing, if Sergey is engaged in anything other than his (awesome!) blue-sky projects in X, he puts a lot of work into hiding it. Seriously. Don't get me wrong, I'm willing to give him a thumbs-up, if he's going to keep putting his capital (financial, social, and political) into socially transformative projects. But I would not describe him as engaged with basically anything web-related (search, ads, social, android, etc).

Also, you seem a little confused about X. X is a tiny fraction of engineers, and as such it's not clear what it has to do with "bringing in top engineers". I mean, unless you mean "bringing in top engineers and preventing them from working on money-making projects". And also, btw, it's mostly within the Mountain View office complex.

This post probably gives the wrong impression. I'm long GOOG, and I think X is awesome, and I think Google is still doing more good than harm. But I believe these in spite of the other stuff I mentioned here, not because of "original founders who remain extremely engaged", especially in the context of sergiosgc's comments.

>>And also, btw, it's mostly within the Mountain View office complex. I know that, my main point is that they aren't part of the Google that most people see.

>>Also, you seem a little confused about X. X is a tiny fraction of engineers, and as such it's not clear what it has to do with "bringing in top engineers". I'm also aware of this. Being a tiny fraction of engineers shouldn't preclude it from bringing in top engineers, correct? Top engineers are a tiny fraction of engineers in the total population, so this seems like a good sign to me.

>>if Sergey is engaged in anything other than his (awesome!) blue-sky projects in X, he puts a lot of work into hiding it Again, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. I don't disagree that Google is no longer the engineering paradise company-wide that it used to be. However, you worry about not having engineers on money making projects. I disagree that the X lab is not a money making project. They don't have revenue goals and targets in the way that most places would, but I can't imagine something better for Google's long term bottom line than things like Project Loon being successful, or becoming the first mover in the self-driving car world.

>>For one thing, most of the complaining about the (relative) decline in engineer-centric culture at Google has happened since, oh, about six months after Larry returned to the CEO position. You may be right about this. I don't totally know. I do know that Eric Schmidt doesn't have Larry's credibility as an engineer, and this original thread was about Schmidt's destruction of engineering culture, not Larry's. For all the worry about the reduction in 20% time and all the stuff that Google does that drives me nuts (G+, shutting down Reader - that one still hurts), they still have the X lab working on moon shots being driven by a founder. Come to think of it, the X lab may have replaced 20% time as Google's innovation lab (not saying I agree with that, there is a place for innovation and improvements in non-moonshots too, this is just a thought I had as I wrote this out).