Nah dog, you're overcomplicating it. All it requires is a person or two in a management chain to recognize the hint of long term business potential in a technical change. It doesn't have to be a sure thing, or a big thing, the bare minimum is that they just notice a business model that could be enabled, and choose to explore it. Then once the company takes on the initiative, some combination of communication and intuition spread the understanding of what they're doing across some of the buisness. For the wider scale, all the rank and file need to do is play dumb, or be legit unaware, about the obvious incentive they're working towards.
That's not a vast complicated conspiracy. That's every single business' outward-facing messaging strategy.
When parent poster talks about the "size, scope and sophistication of Google," the point doesn't have to be that they're meticulously coordinating. The point can simply be: there's no fucking way they're not playing dumb.
This is my problem with people using Occam's Razor to understand business decisions. They often assume the idea that someone could be employed in business development and spend months championing and refining an idea is a level of complexity that must fail to a more simplistic explanation. But we know that shit happens all the time.