Could it be part of the aftermath of the layoffs?

The reaction to the layoffs is a good example of this.

Lots of CEOs in the past have conducted layoffs pretty much the same way-- notify everyone at the same time (per local laws) and write an email blaming themselves as the cause.

Yet the media ran article after article for almost 2 weeks with personal stories about how people felt particularly slighted by Google, when they did it pretty much the same way as other companies.

Amongst 12,000 people at any point in time, they will be doing normal life things-- like feeding their baby at 2am-- when they got the email. Yet somehow this became the basis of so many "Google doesn't care about its employees" stories.

This is because Google immediately cut access to those people and treated them like personas non grata. It was a pretty bad layoff.

Immediately turning off access is common practice in a layoff

Not the way Google did it.

Aftermath of a poor period for Google overall. From the outside, Pichai's Google looks very much like Ballmer's Microsoft: a company still milking profits generated by yesterday's innovation, but unable to produce genuinely-new stuff.

It appears that Google's long-standing dominance in search has not translated into meaningful innovation in recent years. Despite occasional hardware launches that imitate Apple and multiple failed attempts to launch a messaging platform, there has been a conspicuous lack of successful projects.

Furthermore, Google's ongoing incorporation of ads into Google Maps and declining search quality may be turning search into a wasteland of SEO. This may be the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, prompting discussion about whether a leadership change is needed.

>> It appears that Google's long-standing dominance in search has not translated into meaningful innovation in recent years.

Google IMHO is still innovating, but still hasn't figured out how to turn that into product/profit. Since their P/E is under 20 they could just issue a dividend of 4 to 5 percent and people would immediately stop expecting growth from them.

Innovation without also seeking to mesh it into a product/market fit is just burning cash. You can innovate, but also need to land it.

Also, they might just be creating a reputation for themselves of killing every new interesting thing that people just aren't as interested in trying their new things. That's a self-own.

This, exactly. The long term strategy has been demonstrably bad.

What did he achieve?

Google search is worse than before.

Youtube recommendations feel worse than before.

Gmail lets in spam (maybe I was unlucky few times).

Android market / play market has very bad search...

Rest is stagnating? Maybe even better, at least they dont change it for worse.

They hired thousands of employees yet you cannot contact a person. What do those people even do?

"Everyone" (apart the CEO?) knows that in Google you get promoted for shipping half baked stuff, so for years they ship half baked stuff to kill it few years later.