You touched on something else I wanted to mention - that there is nothing wrong with a peacetime general as long as you're not at war. Your point about Patton is spot on, he needs a war or his style is too much.
I see this in startups. The people/leadership you need to go from 0->1 are often not the same people to go from 1->N.
To bring this back around to Google. People are talking about the CEO, but does Google have the rank and file ready to go to war?
having been out for 5 1/2 years, I can't say for sure. But even in 2017, there were a large number of "born on third base and think they hit a triple" people.
