Although I would be really surprised if this was something they actually announced, it doesn't really help Intel to announce something like that and as the article points out it can anger other customers.
That said I have worked in Intel's System Validation group which was responsible for determining when a new chip was ready for general availability. I have directly witnessed Intel's preferential customer treatment where Intel allocated all of their processor production on a new processor to their largest customer(s). In my case they were selling Nehalem chips to Dell long (6 - 9 months) before others like NetApp could get them to start building filers with them. I have also worked in the platforms group at Google so I have an idea of the scale of their hardware effort and how many chips such a deal with Google might entail.
As a result, I think the actual story is this -
Intel got back first silicon that was acceptably functional on the new parts. This kicked off a discussion between their top customers and the potential early availability of parts. Those customers did a calculation on what advantage they might get by getting hardware early. Then Intel went down their customer list from most strategic to least strategic and offered them access. Either Google or Facebook was on the top of that list (likely Google) and they bought some, but not all of the production capacity, and then Intel offered the remainder to the second customer on the list who agreed to take the rest. Everyone else has to wait until the part is released to general production in all of its target fabs.
Further, it won't cause Intel any grief because all their customers know that the ones with the most volume get the most "love" from Intel. And the situation might be different the next time around.
It's the breaking the promise more than anything else that problematic, if the sources, presumably from these screwed companies, are accurate.
And with Thanksgiving, I'm not sure there's been enough time for it to further leak out.
On the other hand, it's a claim that Intel will do something that's both extraordinary and extraordinarily stupid for the long term, so we indeed need some more proof.