Yes, I think you are right. I think this is part of growing up pains that Google is going through. Initially you are a cool small company where you're making b

Yes, I think you are right. I think this is part of growing up pains that Google is going through. Initially you are a cool small company where you're making buttloads of money, people think of you as very cool/smart/hip, you feel great going to work, wearing company's colors in public, every time someone talks about the company it's to praise it and express their envy towards your job. People are encouraged to bring their whole person to work, that improves productivity and makes the office feel like home. Of course, this works very well because of all those things I said plus the fact that with a small sized company the make up of the team is mostly non-diverse and even when it gets some employees belonging to minority groups, they are very likely to be of a similar socio-economic background. Then the company grows. Mistakes are being made, some more accidental than others but with a large company affecting everyone's lives and making offensive amounts of money it's inevitable it's going to do things some people hate it for or going to create enemies, people that dedicate significant parts of their lives to criticize everything there is to criticize about the company. Now the environment outside and inside is not as great or relaxing. You start to not wear the company colors anymore and notice that if you bring up the company you work for in conversation the immediate reaction is to complain or to criticize some past action. Also now you have a very large number of employees compared to the starting days, with different views/ideas/socio-economic backgrounds so there's lots of friction and it's extremely easy to say something that someone somewhere will find it offensive. I think in that situation a return to a more traditional "let's not talk about non-work stuff at work" approach seems better to me.