Marketplaces for resources are great. I was questioning the use of per-person credits as opposed to per-project credits. The former seems ridiculous, especially if everyone gets the same amount
The evidence indicates that the TPU marketplace caused a ton of friction and hampered Google Brain’s ability to innovate. They got merged with Deepmind after all.
Google’s golden years / Bell Labs years came from plumbing ads monopoly proceeds into blue sky projects. Contrast with Bytedance / Tiktok, which ruthlessly out-competed Facebook etc in the marketplace for attention. Googlers don’t want to actually build a good product and compete for users, they just want what suffices to feed their personal nerdy interests.
Google has had complex "marketplaces" around company resources for years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t6L-FlfeaI
It's a cultural value, like playing board games.