My best guess, just from observing Google from the outside, is that they have a real problem doing boring stuff. Maintain something? Boring, won't do it. Fix de

My best guess, just from observing Google from the outside, is that they have a real problem doing boring stuff. Maintain something? Boring, won't do it. Fix developer-facing bugs in Android? Boring, won't do it (instead, let it sit ignored for 2 years then inaccurately mark the bug obsolete). Document anything beyond some surface-level relatively-fun-to-write stuff? Boring, won't do it. Update docs? Boring, maybe half-ass it and leave the rest outdated, but don't bother to mark it as such. Nitty-gritty work to really support e.g. Material Design? OMG so boring. Port existing library/SDK to one of our other platforms (I'm looking at you Android Maps API)? Ugh, no, I guess I'll do the minimum possible so I can move on to something more fun. Improve performance on any of our many poorly-performing products? BORING BORING BORING, no.