It's more likely the people who develop and test and prioritize the features live in mountain view, with 5g and gigabit fiber with ultra low latency to the data centers.
That's why the dev tools in browsers have an option to simulate slower data speeds to test this kind of thing. Having good connectivity and failing to provide a useable experience for slower connections is just bad dev work.
Or, it’s a symptom of the ownership of the search experience being smeared out through a large organization.
Sure, but these people must have left that golden zone at some point and had their clicks stolen like the rest of us.
When I lived in Mountain View the absolute fastest internet connection I could get at home was 100mbs Comcast that was never that fast and had all kinds of bizarre and inexplicable random latencies. My internet is faster and infinitely more reliable since I moved to rural Southern Oregon mid pandemic.
Hahahahaha, my biggest surprised moving to Silicon Valley right down the street from Google was how even in their local neighborhood, Comcast still had a monopoly on internet access. My apartment offered the choice between Comcast or no internet. Even today, FTTH in the Bay Area is not commonly available and indeed we can’t get it in our neighborhood, only FTTN with no guaranteed speeds. UVerse won’t even install at our address, so we’re stuck with Comcast still. Sonic is over ATT’s last mile and they won’t install at our address.