I think they just overestimated the ability of their employees to respect each other when they hold differing world views. That's kinda natural once you reach a certain size and your colleagues may as well be randos on the street. To be fair, that's a learning most businesses stumbled upon decades ago, it's the new generation of "re-invent management" companies that are speedrunning HR policy.
An example of this working is in investment management. The job is largely about groups of people arguing with each other. Often this comes down to differences in "world view".
Some places get around this by just hiring people with the same "world view". But other places take the more robust approach of hiring different people and encouraging more argument. I am not sure if this works because they just don't hire very dogmatic people (a group that is very over-represented in tech) but it can/does work (and does scale up to thousands of employees).
Definitely, large groups that have members across society ban these discussions (the Masons is one example). If you are hiring/recruiting anyone, then no politics is smart. But this isn't the case here. It is possible...if you are motivated. From what I have seen, the Googler approach is to be actively unmotivated.
It is easier to think everyone else is dumb and you are smart than acknowledge you are wrong or don't know. Investment management is unusual, the feedback loop is clear. You are as smart as your last trade. That promotes a robust self-image. I can see why the average Googler doesn't have these traits. They seem to be in the job description (i.e. a lot of people want to work at Google because that will mean they are smart). You reap what you sow.