People always talk about these things as if they are mutually exclusive.

In reality, there’s lot of opportunities that benefit all 3 of user, Google, and decision maker.

it’s kind of the fundamental principle of trade/business - that both sides can proper in a deal.

That's nice in theory, but can you say that Google does things that actually achieve that trifecta?

Sure. It's just we tend to notice the tradeoffs and forget the win-wins. Every bug fixed and every performance improvement benefits all three.

> Every bug fixed and every performance improvement benefits all three.

I'd love to think so, but the truth is that any platform, working correctly, disadvantages those who contribute most of the content. The platform owners earn money in ways that are always contrary to the interests of the content creators.

YouTube, Google maps, Gmail ...

Name a single YouTube content creator who is satisfied with that arrangement.

"Content creators" (assuming by that you mean those who are trying to make a living off the platform) are mostly irrelevant.

Youtube's main source of revenue is ads which they serve regardless of whether the uploader is taking a cut from the upload or not. Most users have always and will continue to upload to and consume from youtube without the expectation of making money from the process.

So, yes in general users have historically been more or less satisfied with the deal: watch ads, get free video platform.

Here's Tom Scott quoted on MKBHD's channel where he literally says "this is my dream job"

https://youtu.be/GQAvce3MA44?si=deP0GG1hICPp9jr8&t=93

show me a “dream job” and I’ll show you an industry that is notorious for chewing up dreams and spitting them out

game developer, musician, mangaka, streamer, etc

At least from my perspective it’s just the relentless pursuit of driving stock prices up

Why would that shift it from 'for the benefit of Google' to 'for the benefit of whoever makes the decision'?

If you're cashing out all of your RSUs over the next 5 years, you don't necessarily care about the long term ramifications of your decision. Just that it pumps the stock price in the short term

Because once the company is big enough, it becomes competitive and immoral enough for employees to start to fear each other. So everyone starts to develop an "every man for themselves" mentality.

Nothing to do with it. We're not mature enough to recognize the importance of a flat hierarchy and adopting a startup-like model with our internal teams (business and technical independence, succeed and you'll be rich, fail and you're fired)

As a result, the larger the company, the larger the hierarchy, the larger the inefficencies. At the extreme you approximate the government of a country.

Layers of managers who care only about collecting a paycheck, engaging in company politics and looking busy cause exactly this problem. Managers will pick the best decision for them, not anyone else.

What are your thoughts on companies that adopted holacracy?

Yes. Those that don't make it to those transition points have "failed".

And yet…

Kind of reminds me of the evolution of bureaucracies

Or:

These users don't seem to know what they want. I'll just listen to whomever keeps calling me personally about things. My buddies are successful, so it makes sense.

Eh, these shareholders don't seem to know what they're doing. I'll just listen to myself. Everything I do makes sense to me, so that makes sense.