>How could someone higher up not say "this is the dumbest thing ever, merge the teams or reassign one to something else"???

Seriously! Executives at Google surely must be aware of the memes by now. Are they so delusional they don't believe them? They don't care? When they chat with each other, which app do they use? Steve Yegg's platform rant still rings true: Google's dogfood is all snouts and hooves.