Your statement was the google was successful because of their starting position only, and that their bad management doesn't matter because they can't screw it up being in such a great position.
I think the existence of other companies that were in similar starting positions, and then subsequently failed, would prove that you need more than just that starting position to succeed.
My statement is that I do not believe that Google is well run today, or in the recent future, and that OKRs are part of that. I believe that their position is not earned through strong organizational structure in recent years, but that they simply have a strong foothold in an extremely powerful market.
What allowed them to 'win' in that space decades ago? I don't know, nor do I feel the need to know in order to just much more recent history. It could have been organizational structures that either in a different time, or with a different group of people, or at a different scale, or whatever, were the key. Or something else. I have no comment on it.
I don't think I know of a company that has really nailed being well run at scale, I can maybe think of a few that I don't want to name but they aren't in tech anyway.
But I have a very limited view, having lived in SF for a few years and just having insight into the companies I've seen. I bet there are loads of them that I'm just ignorant to.
