The bit about k-means was interesting, but the rest was an irrelevant bore.
It is to help you to understand frameworks for working on graph data better.
If you see it as a humble brag that is an irrelevant bore, you aren't the intended audience.
Also, your idea that it is a humble-brag to talk about a computer cluster at VLDB seems more indicative of a lack of knowledge on your part rather than a lack of "abstract insights".
Irrelevant bore indeed.
I disagree with the tone of the original comment. But I do not disagree with the sentiment. Just having a large installation does not make it interesting. However, Google's large systems almost always push the boundaries of science -- MapReduce, GFS, Spanner, Distbelief and have been a joy to read.