Your first quote leaves off the important bit: against the headwinds of Google culture. I agree, the first half of the sentence is a common scenario among CEOs, it's the 2nd bit that makes it especially challenging.

I disagree that it was "fine" because the people who were respected and held up as prime examples of Googlers – for decades – almost always had nothing to do with the ads business. This sends a signal to the rest that the ads business doesn't really matter, it's not the important work, it's akin to the janitorial work that has to happen so the rest of us can work here. If you do that long enough you end up with people optimizing towards things that aren't aligned with the needs of the business. It was on autopilot, relatively, compared to other areas.

It's the UX, Not the LLM: ChatGPT and Perplexity Can Ship a UI Google Can't

Pichai inherited one of the most difficult challenges: he had to figure out how to grow revenue right as search revenue was plateauing and money was becoming expensive, all against the headwinds of Google's culture. Your comment is a good example of the headwind: I can't think of another company where a greater share of its employees actively despised the industry that paid for them all to be there.

Google's culture wasn't a problem – and maybe a good thing! – when you had a gigantic money printer working in the background, paying for everything. But it was there, ready to be a problem once times got tough.

Generating Descriptive Weather Reports with LLMs

Transitioning from the attention era to the automation era