Probably Short Sighted ...
History and Evolution seem to point to the fact that it's not the animals/objects that are ideally suited to their environment that improve ... you need to take a step back and look at it from a different angle, from a small branch of the tree/code and look at making it better, while leaving the original intact ...
If there is no champion of the Labs, it will not succeed, if they bring labs in house it might be quicker at reacting, but it will not be able to produce things that are not seen as core to the browser, at least not core at the time that they are thought up ...
just my 2cents.