"Sergey Brin says Google 'failed to be on the bleeding edge' of blockchain"
This is similar to Nokia they did not change their product in time, they were too confident about them self. Nokia went down in a short period of time. Google could be lagging behind in blockchain technology but I don't think Google will go down. Google has a wide range of products and services, It will be more beneficial if Google starts investing in blockchain technology, the earlier the better.
I think that if you go too much into the bleeding edge, you will cut yourself in so many different ways. Bleeding edge means that it's likely the technology is untested.
I am sure that there are people inside Google who are looking into blockchain. The company has a policy that employees can spend up to 20% of their time (see link) on any topic that they like. This resulted in their employees coming up with ideas that wasn't part of mainstream. It is unclear whether the employees may want to share the blockchain idea to themselves or give back to Google.