I don't know what the original poster meant, but I may (I'm not sure I would) argue that he may mean things other than simple income/profit. Such things as core competencies/competitiveness/managerial and employee talent and motivation/corporate "cohesiveness"/ability to create successful products/other, maybe more difficult to measure criteria and so forth.

I wouldn't say all (or even most) of the above applies to Google, but I do believe that for large corporate systems in general, these sorts of things become a major issue when you have half a million employees and hundreds of subsidiaries/divisions.

Just trying to make things clearer.

Could you show some data? For example, if you're talking about workplace happiness, Google is still ranked #1 company to work for:

http://fortune.com/best-companies/google-alphabet-1/

Disclaimer: I do not work for Google.

Income should keep rising after the company "peaks". By the time income actually stops rising, executives will have started pooping masonry, and the collapse will have to be acknowledged by everyone since it will be officially visible to everyone.

Microsoft's income kept rising steadily through the '00s too and look at where they are.

I'd trade places with Microsoft.

Earning $16.7 billion on $85.3 billion in the 12 months to June 2016 sounds like a pretty sweet deal.

Most CEOs will do anything to trade places with Microsoft.