Google is not a hot start-up that it used to be. When you look at the blogs, people now get excited about facebook or twitter. There is not anymore the pioneering spirit and enthusiasm that you see in a startup. In short, Google is getting old.
Google now has over 20,000 employees. At such a size, it is very difficult to make a lot of impact as an individual. Everyone has a pretty specific role, so it limits the development opportunities of employees by taking a broad set of responsibilities, and trying out new roles. As it grows, the level of bureaucracy also increases. Every proposal of projects and features have to go through a long process for approval before it can be launched to market.
Finally, if you are a person who is entrepreneurial, and willing to take risk to strike it rich, I think you'd be better of to work at a startup than working at Google. The stock price at Google has been decreasing, and we wouldn't expect it to skyrocket like it did in 2004. And after all you own only a very, very piece of company. You would much likely get rich working at a startup in which you're the second or third employee and own 2-4% of the startup, if, of course the startup succeeds.
