Exactly. The main way to get promoted at Google is to claim that you launched something important. Results in a lot of busywork and misaligned incentives.
That amazing internal knowledge graph you're talking about folks on the outside never seeing? That is very ironic because that knowledge graph used to be Freebase.com and a lot of the data came from the open data community who volunteered their efforts and expertise. Then Google bought Metaweb and shut down Freebase.
I think it's far from a fad, the adoption of the semantic web has been enormous in the past 5 years. Almost every major tech company (and many financial institutions) now have their own Knowledge Graph team.
Why are you reading and replying to the comments when you haven't read the article? You've come at this with a terrible take by inventing a non-existent NDA that would exonerate the CEO. Why bother?
I don't know why you're up in arms about this, but it's clearly not false. Almost all of the games content is PvE based. The PvP mode is very small in scope compared to everything else that's available.
If you're not a US citizen, you won't have to pay income at all due to tax residency rules. only the US is brazen enough to charge non-resident citizens income tax
This is a bit like when they cancelled the Rotherhithe walking & cycling bridge because it was allegedly going to cost 400 million. Powerful establishment lobbying groups ensure that government estimates for green projects make them seem unaffordable.