I think Google freaked out to the Nth degree because it's quite likely that cached data is probably stored in a system that doesn't have [m]any security restrictions attached to it, and... well, there are >72k people. You're going to find well-meaning "what happens if I... OOPS" types (for any definition of "OOPS"), along with (ostensibly equally well-meaning) "hey, an OAuth token that actually works! Let's see just how far we can take this..." people... and then some that aren't just interested in fun engineering challenges, if you get what I mean.

I have no idea what Google employees have access to. I've always wondered whether they can hand-code their own MapReduce syntax over Google's actual Web index (I could find SO MANY THINGS if that were possible!). I wouldn't be surprised if the cache data <-> index were accessible to everyone who's been around for >6 months, so they can tinker with it.

But I guess the only reason I'm able to type this is that I haven't signed The Large Book Of NDAs (I presume it's large).