Why would not having a CTO symbolize Google's strategy shift from tech? Google has more than enough talented tech visionaries at high levels in each of its sub organizations, probably overpopulated with such.
I don't think Google lacks tech direction, quite on the contrary, they still excel and way ahead of the crowds. But they don't have a strategy to make money off from those technologies, other than limited venues like advertising/play store. But that is nothing CTO can solve.
I'd say Google is showing signs of too many captains on the ship when it comes to tech. I'm not going to bore you with all the examples that are being cited elsewhere in this thread but there are plenty of things where people are raising eyebrows lately.
A CTO's role is to provide clarity internally and externally on what a company is doing technically. In absence of a CTO, that role is for the CEO. Pichar is not enough of a credible leader on this front.
E.g. Steve Jobs was a clear visionary leader. Bill Gates was a clear technical founder CEO. They did not need CTOs. Amazon has an effective business oriented CEO that defers to a very strong CTO (Werner Vogels) for technical things.
AWS is no accident; that requires technical leadership (Vogels) and long term strategic thinking (Bezos). Google just got leapfrogged by MS in the same space. I'd argue lack of leadership is a big reason.
There have been a bunch of reports citing MS as being second in terms of market share and growing nicely (hence the MS valuations going up), for cloud based deployments rather than third after Google. That's a failure of Google to beat Amazon and not to get beaten by someone else. That happened on Pichar's watch. That's just a small part of Google's business and a huge part of Amazon's business. Puts the whole ads are all there is point of view a bit in in perspective. They are all ballpark in the trillion dollar valuation range so I think the comparison is fair.
I don't think you have any interest in discussion. CTO's role is of course not just technology related but he can't just veto the management without reason. There are pros and cons to both side for google, and I will be damned if moral reason was not considered when the decision was made, even when there is no CTO.
You are right in your views of them having enough technical leadership.
The main difference I can assume is when you look to 1 or 2 (founders)equal leaders to set vision it’s easier to get behind than however many VPs they have(today).
I don't think Google lacks tech direction, quite on the contrary, they still excel and way ahead of the crowds. But they don't have a strategy to make money off from those technologies, other than limited venues like advertising/play store. But that is nothing CTO can solve.