I wonder how much that can get in the way. I'm sure he adds insights into the development team from likely conceptualizing data and architecture vastly different than most people.
I think that the Google is stepping into the realm of government because they might feel that government services are lacking in this realm. These records and controls for what remains available would be better served in a government setting than a private corporation one.
It talks about possibly using machine learning to create many videos targeted at toddlers and using techniques to ensure the next autoplay item doesn't change to another channel.
Google is claiming to be acting in the interests of the public without the same mechanisms accessible to the public for moderating how this ability is used. Today Google can cite public interest, but it is just aligned and not acting purely on the public's interest. Like Facebook holding all user data forever, Google will definitely want to hold all data forever because someone it might make shareholders money.
Self driving cars. The amount of time saved for humanity will be absolutely staggering and free up people to spend more time accomplishing more things.
I've heard about stories about government agencies and such second hand from family members. To me, it sounds like it breaks down to this because the projects that they are running are not subject to risk of failure. There isn't a small company that is going to absolutely die if a deliverable doesn't meet the market's demands at a certain point in time. Just don't stop throwing money and resources at the project until it is done no matter what.
They don't have to relay purely on one solution. It would make sense to host certain parts of their infrastructure on GCP if enough of their customers are also located on GCP.
Those are really valuable skills too. There is a slant for engineering here since the site is for, by, of engineers. I recently joined a new team and we have a totally kick-ass technical product manager we work with pretty heavily. He is an absolute boon to the team when it comes to interfacing with different parts of management and being able to walk to the talk of the specifics of certain technologies.
For your last point, I'd be cognizant of being able to measure your value objectively somehow. It can be easy to get left behind if the value you provided didn't get tracked because people were only paying attention to lines of code.
Mess with stuff in your free time. Most of the time people won't want to hire you to lead implementation/designing things unless you have experience doing it which can be a pretty nasty catch-22. Having some side projects side steps that and puts you ahead of a lot of your peers.
Also have a clear sense of direction of where you want to be going and what you want to be doing. Without that management and mentors won't know how to push you along and might come to expect you to remain in the same position for longer than you expect to.
There is another article [1] that speaks very similarly about how niche unique things become popular and ultimately subverted. It (being [1]) speaks about subcultures being completely dead and I disagree with that. They are just transformed in the wake of the internet and the beginnings of social media. I would even say that due to sites like Reddit and Patreon more subcultures exist and are more diverse than before.
The US government hasn't acknowledge the existence of aliens, but in 2016 the CIA admitted to funding programs because they suspected the existence of aliens. It is very hard to find a good source to link though due to terrible SNR when you google "cia aliens"
It always bugs the hell out of me that many large organizations will file for patents that they have no intent of developing. I worked at a certain large corporation previously and they would have patent brain storming camps encouraging various employees to think of and file for patents on just about any topic regardless of the business's involvement in that field. A large majority of patents that come out of those workshops either stifle innovation in that area completely or are used to later extort someone who wishes to actually bring it to market.
It isn't just about skin color, it is about in-group favoritism. Most people tend to seek out similarities to others in groups depending on the context. Could be sex, race, profession, hobbies, interests, etc. There definitely is a scale of how people treat those they have categorized as out-group as well.
A buddy of mine has a theory that every great product needs a gimmick. It needs something that makes it seem like it stands apart from similar products.
Going to sell a pen? No! Sell a pen that appeals to someone's sense of a adventure, even if it (and the person buying it) will spend its entire life sitting on the desk at the office.