Interesting to compare and contrast American and European attitudes toward social mobility [1].
Apparently Americans are far more likely than Europeans to believe that hard work gets you to the top.
However, these expectations are apparently quite divorced from reality. Apparently hard work is far more likely to get you to the top in Europe (especially continental Europe) than in the US.
I was in the London office (until a year ago) and led an engineering team spanning London, Zurich and New York. The majority of Google Zurich's engineers are not Swiss—elsewhere from Europe, from across Asia and many from the US.
As a former Googler who was involved in comparing pay across Google sites, Zurich was on par with Mountain View in gross pay (and ahead of New York), and after-tax pay was markedly higher in Zurich.
While Berlin is a great city, it is very far from being a top-pay city in Europe.
You're really a user; not a customer. Customers pay. Google is selling your eyeballs to advertisers. Advertises are Google's customers.