Tojuro

The Big 3, much like AT&T monopoly and other US blue chip corporations were largely exempt from competition from WWII right into the 1970's. They also had a sense of service to the nation, not just the shareholders.

Then in the 1970's you saw the start of what you could call 'supercapitalism' -- a hyper-competitive global economy. This brought in foreign competition for the automakers, and fuel crisis' (driven by OPEC demands, not shortages of any kind). The bloated bureaucracies of the Big 3 couldn't compete. The products from the 70's until fairly recently prove it.

People like to blame the unions, but the flaws of the UAW were tied to the corporation as a whole. Don't get me wrong.....the UAW was horribly flawed, but that's just bad fruit from a bad tree....it shouldn't shock anyone. You only need to look to German or Japanese automakers, the nation's creating competitive vehicles during those times, to see that unions are an essential part in being competitive in manufacturing. In Germany unions are practically a religion, and Japanese manufacturing is where US manufacturers learned to give every worker on the line a say in quality, etc.

Does Google still have the '20% Time' perk and what's your opinion of it?

Also, what kind of things did/do non-developers do with this time? Like what does a person selling ads or working in QA or support do with it?

The US is almost surely involved already -- the CIA probably played some part in the protests/overthrow. They want Russia tied up with regional conflicts.

It also makes sense that Russia would feel threatened here. Their fear going back to the 1990's has been NATO on the border, and this revolt is a clear step to that. It would be no different than a revolt in Canada that brought in an anti-US government.