The man who killed Google Search?

The thing I love about this story is that it demonstrates that even in a global mega-organization, a single person can make a huge difference, for better (Gomes) or for worse (Raghavan).

>a single person can make a huge difference,

This is probably the most true thing. It might depend on the person and the environment, but there are certainly people you cannot discount.

I'm not sure why people buy into the idea of this being down to an underling and not the CEO. Generally, the way this type of management structure works, it all heavily depends on the direction and incentives in place from the top down. And obviously it is not an underling that decides to replace someone with himself.

Now, let's look at how the corporate investors that hired that CEO operate.