That's more or less clear, but the big question is: do the people higher up don't realize what is going on? Especially Gmail is losing its competitive advantage

That's more or less clear, but the big question is: do the people higher up don't realize what is going on? Especially Gmail is losing its competitive advantage - it's still usable, but slow enough that the competition looks blazing fast. If anything, they should focus on things that make it more difficult for other startups to compete with Gmail - but by the recent update they just made it easier! There must be some business people at Google knowing this, I can't believe they're all patting each other backs saying the new Gmail works better than ever, there must be some folks with some common sense in the upper management.