My best guess is culture. Google's perks went from a means to allow employees to work longer and harder to an entitlement that actually undermined productivity.

My best guess is culture. Google's perks went from a means to allow employees to work longer and harder to an entitlement that actually undermined productivity. It also appears they allowed internal activists to distract and delay the release of various tech–LLMs, for example, that would have given them a multi-year lead. Again, too many do-nothing marketers, PMs, DEI bureaucrats, TPMs, Directors and VPs, not enough actual builders. Maybe this is the blood letting Google needs to get it back into gear.