> If you're dependent on creating products that people love with features that help people in their day-to-day lives, you can't afford to be completely insulated.

> A trader who is focused on a numbers all day - can.

Though I agree that insular corporate cultures can be bad, I do not find this argument very compelling. I thought part of Google's operations was turning things into numbers so they can make decisions based on those numbers. Yes, in practical terms, the features of Google products are what is important. But with a huge user base, they can afford to do A/B testing, try new features, etc. and turn it all those things into numbers which can be analyzed for trends. I suspect that is what they are doing when they kill things like their RSS reader, modify Google+ requirements, etc.

Edit: tweaked working