Thomas Kurian is awesome - trained by Larry Ellison no doubt :).
People in cloud are profoundly unhappy. It's scary.
A little bit more Amazon/Oracle, a little less traditional 'Google'. I think most people work 45 hours a week. I don't see anyone slacking off. But it's not a death march, it pays well, there are tons of perks still.
shrug It's not some magical fantasy land that some people make google out to be, but it's a nice job with interesting problems, smart coworkers, and it pays well.
You don't understand why people fear the culture changing to something else? Most people there like the Google work culture, of course they would fear the culture becoming more like Microsoft or Oracle.
When I worked at Google I had no deadlines, full control over what I do during my work days, full ability to prioritize different projects or help people get things done if they ask etc. If that suddenly changed it would feel horrible, as you can understand, if you are used to a typical work culture maybe you don't see it but if you are used to the typical Google one they at least had before then it is a massive owngrade.
However, Cloud seems pretty intent on shipping and meeting deadlines so if we commit, I do feel pressure to make that deadline.
I don't see any likely path by which Kurian would become CEO of Alphabet.