I wonder if there is some megacorp regression to the mean going on here. Google holds itself up as somehow special, and I think that it's right to be cynical about that today. I also think there was a golden age of sorts, back when real-world distributed systems were much more fringe, and Google was a legitimate trailblazer. Then, the spreadsheet number crunchers come in, and the elves leave Middle Earth[1].

[1]: In reference to this famous essay: https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...