Even without working for Google, I can fully appreciate most of the issues and proposed solutions. Like in any big company, only the people "deep in the trenches" even see these issues, worry about them, and worry why management is so clueless that they don't even see the issue.

However, the key is to understand that these are simply superficial manifestations of a bigger issue: as the company grows in size, communication requirements grow exponentially, and even a slight mismatch in the talents of people will lead to serious issues. I don't think any of the recommendations will work at the scale of 20,000 engineers that Google has.

Take open source software for instance. For a 10 person start up, it works beautifully. Now try convincing 10 other startups to adopt exactly the same set of software, and you'll have a never ending religious war on hand. But you cannot also let everyone to pick their own solution, for then the 10 different groups cannot integrate with each other.

Far too many people keep complaining (I complain where I work for as well :), but the solution is not easy. By far the best approach is for people to realize that there is a need for a company to grow so much, and not anymore. However, human nature will not permit that.