The conclusions of this article may not necessarily be wrong (everything gets killed eventully), but it pretty spectactularly misses the point of 20% time. The interesting part of 20% time is that it is not about what management thinks, but about how much momentum you can get on your idea yourself and with others you can attract and motivate. I don't work there, but from my understanding the idea is that mgmt can't reject an idea per se -- if you want to work on it that is your call.
No, Google will be killed by people who it rejected to take.
This article is pure speculation.
Many famous empires were destroyed from inside.
Like what?
Like a couple of shots inside a thermal exhaust port.
Bob seems to be right (as usual). The moral of his story: don't try to buy up 50,000 painters and keep them under one roof, that's just disastrous.