Getting managers excited is one of the unwritten skills required at L5+ lol.
Strategically, this is called being a Fast Follower. One of GOOG's problems is that it acts in the market as a fast follower, but tells itself internally that its an groundbreaking innovator. Your reaction (which was also my reaction),
> Nothing I ever do here is exciting. Thought maybe working on app with over a billion users would be exciting...
is a form of corporate-wide cognitive dissonance between GOOG's propaganda and reality.