This is a meme that people love and there's some truth to it, but also a number of ways in which it's inaccurate.
Sure you can get promoted for launching a new thing, but you can also get promoted for fixing a first pass implementation, for scaling something from a small user base to a large user base, and so on, as long as you can show the "impact" of the change – whether that's revenue, savings, productivity, improved UX, etc.
It's possible that up at the top there's more of a focus on shipping new things, but I don't think that's something that 99% of Googlers need to obsess over, and it doesn't reflect the bulk of the work actually being done.
Sure you can get promoted for launching a new thing, but you can also get promoted for fixing a first pass implementation, for scaling something from a small user base to a large user base, and so on, as long as you can show the "impact" of the change – whether that's revenue, savings, productivity, improved UX, etc.
It's possible that up at the top there's more of a focus on shipping new things, but I don't think that's something that 99% of Googlers need to obsess over, and it doesn't reflect the bulk of the work actually being done.