google was probably the worst example for me to use tbh, especially since it still has such a good culture of funding researchers. There was a "meme" a few years ago saying gmail's UI has dozens teams working on each of the different buttons, so that was why I said google/gmail.

huang's original comment was referencing layoffs due to AI, and I think a lot of the "maintaining/replacing existing stuff" engineers are at the most risk atm. But why lay people off why they could be pushed to work on new risky projects :-/

I do sort of think the stereotype of killing projects is kind in the vein of what I meant. like idk, google has so much money I feel like they don't need ~everything to clearly and immediately fit into their ai / data / advertising / search stuff. earnings - expenses is so huge, I think it should be fine to just allow some things to stay "small" without being a more "distinguished" moonshot-style project.