There's a surprisingly large cross section of people paid extremely well in Google.

The company is heavily automated and very profitable, which means they can attribute those profits to the humans largely responsible for them with accuracy that isn't often seen outside finance. The bonus structure is extremely kind to the highly productive.

I'd really like to hear some specifics on this. What kind of job descriptions do they have? Roughly how many are there? Are they executives, managers, or individual contributors? Does this only happen in bonus form for extraordinary performance, or can new hires start with the expectation of comp at this level? I regularly hear stories about non-executives getting 7 figure paydays in trading and investment banking. I hear stories about non-executive tech people getting 7 figure pay days due to startup liquidity events. This is the first I've ever heard of something like this at an established tech company.