I think he made the right call. It's hard for me to imagine him having trouble finding work with 4 years of Google on his resume. That's the tech industry equivalent of being a made man IMO.
he was a very well-known and admired figure in the tech world long before he joined google. in fact his four years there are close to being the least impressive thing on his resume.
People choose "quality-of-life" over "job" all the time, especially when you remove the need to make money from the equation.