The creation of Google Photos was basically an act of mutiny by David Lieb. He kept getting told to stop working on it and he kept doing it anyway. Eventually

The creation of Google Photos was basically an act of mutiny by David Lieb. He kept getting told to stop working on it and he kept doing it anyway. Eventually resorting to back-channeling to Larry in order to get him to champion the project. He tells the story in an episode of the podcast "The Social Radars." Pretty good listen.