The way this works is:
1/ Google crunches some data
2/ The company leadership looks at that data, twists it to leave out "inconvenient" facts, and tells whatever narratives they want to tell (internally and to the NYT)
3/ No data or any empirical results are ever released (even internally)
FTR, I'm a manager at Google. I don't feel qualified to comment on the research or the specifics of this article, but I can assure you Google takes building effective teams pretty darn seriously.
I also read the article and saw no data points or anything that would suggest "some of the company’s best statisticians, organizational psychologists, sociologists and engineers" had any numbers to work with. (beside that certain employees were involved)
The thing is that confirmation bias is real, and cost and time often preclude the use of strong systems to exclude it. Additionally The Tribe quickly develop narratives which then dominate funding and discussion. Phrases like "we've moved to execution".
Before finger wagging at dumb managers starts... consider Richard Feynman : https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oil_drop_experiment
OP made some very bold claims about how Google works internally and unless he's a first-hand witness (Google employee), he really needs to provide some data of his own to back his assertions up.
I read the response from the Googler as an appeal to authority. If Google doesn’t release the study, they open themselves up for conjecture and skepticism.
To criticize OP for being inaccurate is fine, but absent any references, Google is making the same argument as the Googler.
There is not a single piece of useful data in any of those 9 articles.