The interesting subtext to all this is that Android wasn't originally a Google project at all - Android was originally a project started by some ex-Danger worke

The interesting subtext to all this is that Android wasn't originally a Google project at all - Android was originally a project started by some ex-Danger workers. Google bought them out because they didn't want to be locked out of mobile search (and give them credit for prescience because the iPhone hadn't been announced yet). Pichai didn't work on Android, or even search or AdWords or what have you. He worked on a browser toolbar before working on Chrome. Chrome seems to have constantly won internal battles at Google (look at how long Google resisted making Android tablets in favor of giving ChromeOS tablets time to develop), even as Chrome is probably the less successful of the two. It shouldn't be surprising that he lets search take over a project that started in Android.