Sundar was chosen following a series of failures by megalomaniacal executives Larry had appointed/approved to head various departments, including Andy Rubin, Tony Fadell, and Anthony Levandwoski. Sundar was a move in the opposite direction.
Ironically, Vic was was empowered to counter a similar panic an upstart more formidable than OpenAI. He brought a bold vision alright, but that's not sufficient to be a good leader.
Overly opinionated people like that could thrive under Jobs, who was the biggest opinion setter, which made them fight for the most important things while getting a pushback on the most controversial areas and not waste time with minor stuff
Take that and they start going crazy (yes I'm talking about Johnny Ive)
