That’s a strange take. Those researchers were given the resources, the right incentives, the right environment for that kind of research to happen, at Google, in a time when LLMs weren’t all the rage.

“X Built a boat == the builders remain at X until they die” Is a strange definition of building something imo.

I would say it's still correct.

When a company provides an R&D lab, we still attribute the results of that research to the company as well as to the researchers.

After all, if those individuals were not hired that position would still be filled with someone similar, but it's hard to argue that if the lab didn't bring those researchers together, they may have individually gotten the same result.

Honestly, it's not as easy as one may think to build a research lab.