I work pretty high up at Google, and I (obviously) made this account to post in this thread. Google is effectively "dead" in my opinion, and this mirrors (at least in my experience) the feelings of many of our other higher-ups who are concerned with technology rather than the business. Everything has stagnated, it's no longer fun to work here, and it's entirely about making money now. The claims that we don't bend over for government agencies is entirely bullshit. Most of what they wanted was done without question (though I can't say how much of a choice we had). The company will continue, but you'll see us fall out of style, in a similar fashion to what has happened to Microsoft.