I don't know that it is so much that the Google hiring process has selected for adept internal politicians as it is that Google hasn't paid as much attention to

I don't know that it is so much that the Google hiring process has selected for adept internal politicians as it is that Google hasn't paid as much attention to human factors as it should. A lot of Google's philosophy is about automating things a person normal would use their judgment on and just choosing not to perform some human-centric functions at all (e.g. customer support). It's hard to get internal culture right in the best of circumstances. When you treat like an algorithm and you don't get that algorithm right, it encourages all sorts of maladaptive behavior, politicking, etc. To be fair Google's promotion board is not as flawed as say, Microsoft's old stack ranking system. But it does set up incentives in such a way that to advance people may optimize their work in a way that doesn't benefit the company.