The author instantly lost any credibility with me after this line.
Some went nuts with the whole turn "on/off" features (so no branching).
I thought some team within Google also don't do branching? Always HEAD?
[my definition: branching is non-code ad hoc compile-time polymorphism at an arbitrary set of points]
I agree that agile development eliminates some of the needs for branching, but I think there are still many useful ways to add it into your workflow.
Now the article has lost some credibility with me. I agree with you about branching. Although technically what the article says about branching is true, I don't think someone who sees branching the way you and I do would write it that way. (The article didn't lose all credibility since it's from 2008, when although DVCS were reasonably mature, they weren't pervasive.)
I can understand branching being useful for a local copy so that one may implement a variety of features and then picking and choosing which to integrate.
But barring special circumstances, there is only one version of a website out there running in the world, hence branching isn't at all that useful.