I agree with this. All investors may see is a panicking company and a leader who can't inspire or control. Get rid of Sundar. He's a peacetime CEO or a COO.
Sundar became CEO in 2015. The author quit this year. Was his "lack of visionary leadership" not that obvious for 8+ years? Or did the author stay because the stock price and his TC kept going up?
Sundar has been hired by the voting share owners, Larry and Sergey to run their company. This is 100% their fault for being uninterested in the company they control.
Sundar was chosen following a series of failures by megalomaniacal executives Larry had appointed/approved to head various departments, including Andy Rubin, Tony Fadell, and Anthony Levandwoski. Sundar was a move in the opposite direction.
My suspicion here is simple; they couldn't find a proper candidate who can demonstrates technological and operational leadership from both insiders and outsiders. You can simply promote either of them (usually COO suits better though), but that risks departure of another candidate, so this compromise has to be made. Anyway, this might be okay for Waymo for a short term; unlike other companies, even if those two CEO don't agree on a specific matter, there's an escalation path to Sundar (and ultimately Larry and Sergey).
The current one's only been CEO for four years; the structural problems presumably are older. Like, they probably _should_ consider losing the CEO, but that in itself is not going to fix anything.
Sundar never "took over" in anything but a job title sense. Larry and Sergey continue to hold supermajority voting power over the company's board. The business operates the way Larry and Sergey want it to.
I think people want an excuse to justify their previous positive outlooks on Larry and Sergey by claiming something has changed. But Larry and Sergey still sit in charge of an extremely harmful company under investigation for numerous types of illegal and inappropriate conduct. Both had inappropriate relationships with subordinates that should've gotten them both fired, and both of them have yachts and/or islands that are worth more than some small countries.
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