She was head of Local at the time, which included Maps. Since I was in Maps, I sat right around the corner from her. Her credibility as the original owner of the Search UI was off the charts, although she'd pissed off enough people by 2011 that she wasn't actually in charge of it anymore.
She introduced Tim and Nina and took full credit for it. If your point is that she must have gotten the OK from Larry, Sergey, and Eric -- no argument. Any big initiative has some champion, who depends on top management approval. That doesn't mean that the CEO is personally the driver of everything.
It would not have happened had she not pushed it. If you can't accept that, then we'll just have to call this discussion Done. I was there; you weren't.
