Last I checked weren't some of Google's greatest products (such as Gmail, Google Drive, etcetera) created during their free time?
One of Google's calling cards over the years have been the creative freedom it gives its employees to work independently on projects that they find interesting. The so-called "20% time" policy let Google employees spend 20% of their time on side projects as long as those projects could potentially benefit the company at some point. , however, that most employees are now far too busy with official Google business to devote the same amount of time to side projects that they used to. What's more, the source tells Quartz that Google is intentionally making it much more difficult to take off time for personal projects.