So whatever decisions - in this example - Sundar makes, it only carries so much weight.
And, you also get fired if you're a $500k engineer and you suck at your job. So I'm not sure what's so much different about Sundar - except that if he sucks at his job he has a way better golden parachute.
In what way is this a tricky decision?
The bigger decision was deciding to buy NEXT instead of Be Inc. That decision brought Steve Jobs back to the company and acquired a modern operating system to replace Mac OS Classic.
Amelio was fired for his decision even though it was the right one to save the company. That’s the truly hard part about being a CEO.
Tim Cook's operational experience helped them increase their market cap dramatically once he took over, so I'm not sure you can discount the value of him as CEO.
A bad CEO can definitely drive a company into the ground, so in many cases I think the pay can make sense. Spending the money does not assure a good pick though...
You know, same thing they've surely been doing with VR behind the scenes for years and years. If/when they finally release a product, it won't be because the CEO just suddenly decided to make a big bet, but because they'd made a ton of small bets and waited for one of them to look worth betting big on.
I think Apple'd be easy-mode for a CEO, actually. Tons of capital behind you to undo all but the gravest "whoopsie", and no direct competitors credibly doing anything like the same thing you are (others making devices, sure, but nobody even really trying to attack your niches—not really). It's why they can fuck up a few times in a row and it hardly even matters, as long as they come back to their senses within a few years.