Assuming most transactions are a largish file transfer it seems impressive. And I assume the transactions aren't evenly spaced, so the peak is likely much higher.
4k qps of DNS, for example, would be less interesting.
Impressive or not I just wish people would stop using monthly averages in the headline like this. You can't really make the case that this in-depth stack dive is for a layman audience, so you have to know what a meaningless metric it is.
I totally agree, but this was one of the requirements of the editor to have a "good marketable" headline. And we have to admit that this worked quite well.
On the other hand I feel that the article is very light and is indeed more for layman audience :) In depth one would be 10-15 times longer (and 100 times harder to write).
The QPS is just a number, that doesn't say much. Impressive or not, it's still interesting to read stories like these. My nit pick is that they, like many others are only using one cloud provider, don't put all your eggs in the same basket.
4K QPS where Q = file uploads -> Definitely.
4K QPS where Q = HEAD request? -> Not so much.