Google strikes me as the kind of company where middle-management "just wants or needs to do _something_ to demonstrate _impact_" and just goes ahead and does it their way, and meanwhile, developers (who undoubtedly are top-notch in their own regard) also want to put their skills to good use and just decide to do it "their way" too, with no synchronizing/harmonizing interface between those two groups. And every once in a while, a developer or UX researcher gets thrown in the mix (or middle) to try and build some kind of a bridge between them. It really looks like projects are started out of a crazy overnight "we need to do SOMETHING NOW" hurry, and then 6 months down the road, everyone just sort of lost interest and moved on to other things.