Since we're all doing hot takes, mine is simply that Google has stopped innovating. It's perfectly reasonable to hold an L9 up to a high standard, like figuring out what the next paradigm shift will be and how do we jump out in front of it.
The whole industry has this problem. No one knows what the next big thing will be so it's all just bean counters who want to optimize existing revenue streams. You don't need L9's for that. What was once brave and new is now routine and can be handled by lower-level people.
It was telling that one of the titans of the US tech industry and one of the few real innovators left in the States wanted to copy a Chinese app, I'm talking about Musk wanting to transform Twitter into a WeChat "for the world" [1]. Unfortunately that aspect was lost because of the whole the political brouhaha surrounding Twitter's acquisition. It used to be the other way round, the Germans or the Chinese used to copy the US tech titans.
There's also Zuckerberg. I'm not into AR/VR at all, but he at least tries to build a new tech sector almost from the ground-up. There's very few of those people left in the US.
The whole industry has this problem. No one knows what the next big thing will be so it's all just bean counters who want to optimize existing revenue streams. You don't need L9's for that. What was once brave and new is now routine and can be handled by lower-level people.