Google as it grew basically had two tiers of outcomes for insiders. The inner circle of insiders like Sundar and Susan had Google grow “under” them so they stay

Google as it grew basically had two tiers of outcomes for insiders. The inner circle of insiders like Sundar and Susan had Google grow “under” them so they stayed near the top. A lot of this inner circle has either retired or left, isn’t fit to run the company (some of the purely technical folks) because of their skills, or was forced out because they did bad controversial things (there’s a joke that Sundar won by default because he was the only one that didn’t try to dip his pen in company ink). The other early employees and insiders got layered with outside middle management as Google grew. Since Google is basically controlled by the founders still there are actually very few people left who are qualified on paper to run the company, already work at Google, and have the trust of founders. Now I’m not saying that means nobody could do better than Sundar, but I do think the founders earnestly believe he is 1% better than any second choice.