It's a pity that he chose to withdraw it, it would be great if high profile people like Steve could say stuff like this and stand by it without having to fear for fall-out. After all, the big winners from a piece like this are Google and Amazon, Amazon obviously have some big problems (see Nirvana's post above) and the sooner it gets to the attention of their top level execs the better.

Stuff like this can rot your company from the inside out, and being transparent about it (and even public) can help a lot.