Thats a poor characterization to choose 2 of the least talked about apps from that company. Also your response to the claim "the best engineers do X" is logically flawed. Maybe google doesn't use their "best engineers" to build out those cherry-picked examples? maybe they used them for Search or infrastructure or something else?
I'm commenting on the article, and the first point in the article doesn't sound like search or infra. Maybe read that before assuming things. And why would it be "logically flawed"?