> exact same end result

Not really, but "exact same end result" is far from the current situation. And I'm not saying they shouldn't do it, rather that they really need to catch up.

Google (not counting other Alphabet companies) does a lots of things. I think the original analogy is mostly right.

> "exact same end result" is far from the current situation

My point can be rephrased as "given that the result is the same, do employee counts matter"? If not, then they don't matter in general.

In this case, employee count is very relevant.

It might tell us how realistic scaling to the size of Google is, for example. I don't think it does, but it's an interest thought: could DDG manage Google's search traffic with ~1,000 employees (scaling linearly)? Could it do the same with fewer than that?

A very small part of Google employees actually work on search. If google were to sell everything but the search division, they'd be a small company. The ad business and infrastructure are used by search but not the product.

yes

the second one is doomed