> Would it be a stretch to blame him for the current company culture of nurturing new products left and right just to kill them off after 3-5 years?

“More wood behind fewer arrows” was Google’s direction from Larry Page starting in 2011, which was when they slaughtered a lot of existing and (from Google’s perspective) marginal projects and became a lot more prone to demanding that new efforts prove themselves adequately or be terminated, so Pichai isn’t responsible for starting it, at least.