I thought about this over the weekend, and I have two comments. First, to commenters, this kind of dead end happens at all large companies, so it's unfair to criticize this individual or Google without taking into account that the same thing happens at Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, IBM, Siemens and any other big organization that will survive its founders. While the large corporation participates in a market economy to make revenue, internally it is a command economy, and to my mind resembles an assemblage of regiments, directed by commanders who have different marching orders, rationally designed by the executive to head off competition for both the core business and the future business. The number of people required to make the core business work is absurdly small. The odds against the success of any of the speculative projects are absurdly high. So most people working at a big company are working as bench players in the core business, or on fanciful, doomed projects. This has to be the case -- we're in the business of automation after all.

Second, it's immoral for an individual contributor to resign themselves to this fate. The lost opportunity is terrible for both the individual and society. Be where the action is!