I don't think they're claiming to actually anonymize them. Seems like it's just a stylistic choice to not affirmatively identify them.

To save the rest of you some trouble, the startups are Oyster ("e-books"), Mixpanel ("big data"), and Github ("open source").

While it was probably a legal decision, I actually liked how it worked on an artistic level. As a reader I was trying to piece it together myself. And it also left a feeling of, 'well, this is a specific company she is talking about, but at the same time could easily apply to dozens of others in the industry.'

So they can't sue back.