Note that while it is quite know and admitted at Google, is there a company where it is different? People are complaining about Radar tickets not being fixed while new (half-baked) features keep shipping on iOS as well, and it is somehow for the same reason inside Apple.

Working on improving the quality of the software is not always easy to measure in terms of impact, and hard to get recognition for in the same as shipping a new feature.

Where Google differs, maybe, is that its promotion system is well codified and rewards the "difficulty" of the deliverable. This is skewing the balance to reward adding more complexity in the system for the sake of solving it (you create difficult problems artificially, they aren't intrinsic to the nature of the user needs you should solve).