"When it comes to software engineering at scale, nothing beats Google"

I agree with many of your statements, but this one simply isn't true. They've really struggled to integrate AI into products in a useful way. Do you remember glue on pizza? Founding Fathers reimagined for DEI? The Brain/DeepMind merger was largely an acknowledgement of their many misses from a product perspective.

The pizza glue and DEI stuff were temporary glitches on new products. Their basic engineering on search, gmail etc is pretty solid.