A good article, and applicable also to why some of Google's projects succeed and others fail. What fail? Ones that rely upon a deep understanding of social interactions: Orkut, Buzz, Wave. These social applications/networks don't have a specific purpose they just are and people can use them how they want. Compare that to Gmail, Google Docs, AdWords. Singularly-purposed applications that no one disagrees about how they should be used. Google is great at solving problems, not so great at creatively thinking about situations that may not be problems and may not have a direct solution.
I don't think you can call Orkut as failure on the same level as Wave. Orkut reached #1 in Brazil and is still successful there.
Wave failed utterly and was indeed poorly thought-out on a number of levels.
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I'm not sure if Google Docs is that much more single purposed than Google Wave - it's just that rich documents are something people already understand.
All that said, I think you have a good point about company culture. It's just that companies do have ability to step out of their culture on occasion.
