The changes they are talking about are consumer visible changes to the large money makers. I'm in infrastructure so I don't have first hand knowledge of the fo

The changes they are talking about are consumer visible changes to the large money makers. I'm in infrastructure so I don't have first hand knowledge of the former, but that tracks from what I've heard. Making large changes to search or ads sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare. However, making changes to infrastructure, to technical products, to workspaces, to cloud products, and to APIs seem to strike a nice balance between quality and velocity. You need code reviews, there are tests and static analysis and all that jazz but otherwise ship it. There are very few MBAs around to stall things or create unnecessary process.