My other favorite joke of his: "Rice is great when you're hungry and want to eat like 2000 of something"
There have been reports that the 20% time is being slowly taken away and more heavily policed, and that it's more 100% + 20% time nowadays.
This is mostly untrue (IME) - a 20% project is strongly encouraged, and is used during the performance review. Taking time off of the main projects is expected.
Is it really a side project if it’s used in your performance review?
At Google Cloud the 20% time is just a recruiting tactic. Once you join you'll find out that it should be on top of your existing 100% FTE.