From the outside, it looks like many in the industry assumed Covid-induced changes would be permanent. They hired accordingly, beefed up their headcount and in

From the outside, it looks like many in the industry assumed Covid-induced changes would be permanent. They hired accordingly, beefed up their headcount and in the process ended up getting a lot of talent which wouldn't have gotten in pre-pandemic. Once you recalibrate, you are not left with much choices. I might be wrong here, but part of newer product releases from Google over the last few years (not Deepmind) reflect the quality of motivation/talent they have at their disposal. I have heard stories about Gmail, about how Waze was integrated with Google maps over a weekend, and today you see half baked products which are shutdown within a year. We still use many of the early products today, but I find it hard to think of any new product which has been released in last few years I use regularly, except Google Pay maybe. Not talking about enhancing existing products but new products.