JG is the reason Google has all that ML effort. He joined google via the MetaWeb acquisition; when he'd finished his earn-out he wanted to leave but was asked to look around for something useful to do and consolidated a bunch of dispersed ML efforts. He also bought Deep Mind on behalf of Google.
I don't know why you would say he's "not a DL/ML guy per se" -- he's a programmer, not an MBA type. You consider MetaWeb and TellMe inadequate?
