This is the curse of being a big company. Google is not unique in this sense. I remember a conversation I had with Cory Doctrow few years back. I met him at Cambridge's(UK) Judge Business School where he was giving a lecture to promote open-source ideology. After the lecture I was walking back home and he was going to the bus-stop. So we started chatting, and I bragged about my employer telling him that my company has open-sourced its Operating System. He looked stunned and asked "Which company??". I said Symbian :) And he said, "Ah! Nokia!" :) And then he pulls out an N95 out of his pocket and says "Nokia makes fantastic hardware, but look at the software! You can't even find a menu item. One has to press 2-3 buttons to just find an app." Then he pauses as says, "I visit Nokia, and meet lot of people there. They have some of the smartest people. You talk to them individually, you realise how smart they are." And then he waves the N95 and says, "But you put them together, and they come up with this!" :) I understood what he was saying!