[jka]

I'm guessing here, but I think the author's intent was to share knowledge that's generally applicable in other software engineering environments, rather than learnings that might be specific to Google (those could be both curiosity-building and/or also frustrating for other people to read, if they don't have access to the same systems).

Similarly, it'd likely be possible to learn many of the same findings at other companies -- Google (and the author) have been fortunate to encounter lots of tricky scaling and human issues in technology, and to evaluate potential strategies to deal with those, and it's good to see that knowledge shared.