If you are operating in the Valley then you get startupy folks who really think in terms of “that’ll crush our competition”... Maybe that is an intrinsic sort of motivation, talking to yourself like that? But it’s not a great culture for the company as a whole because it creates an implicit assumption of a zero-sum game. Like strategically you want to instead be saying something like “they can have that space and we are going to differentiate ourselves by leading in this other space” then you foster a culture of creativity rather than competition. And that then infects the rest, like whether your employees are trying to squeak by on 4 hours of sleep—one culture says “fuck yes we gotta keep crushing it” and the other says “I need you to take a day off because I need you at your best and this is you running at 20%.”
Google is weird because the company internals seem to be structured for maximum recruitment; it is meant to be a developer’s paradise. Conventional companies are structured around their executives, it is a paradise for the leadership. Google culture is very focused on creating a paradise for the coders.
Not saying that it doesn't also limit Google’s liability, of course it does, so Legal probably also wants to limit discussion about beating the crap out of any other company in the market. But if you really think your employees are all artists, it is weird to hear artists get super-competitive.