Not sure about the conditions of employment with Google, but if he has archives of emails long after he's left the company, could a lawsuit be forthcoming?
Some of the shenanigans I've seen recently from MS employees in the .NET Core and JS space doesn't inspire me with confidence... For all of Nadella's "turning over a new leaf", it will still take a generation to change the culture of 120 000 employees
Hmmm I evaluated a lot of those (mainly OSM-based) geocoders recently. Unfortunately the quality of results is orders of magnitude worse than Google. The only ones that even came close were Mapbox, Mapquest and Here.
Find an industry that interests you. Focus on the delivery of your projects. There's more to finishing than just churning out code. You'll get the same reward you used get from hobby coding. Make the financial reward is a side benefit.