I have always seen Agile as a way to fight the Waterfall process. Another way to see it is to add professionalism and discipline to companies who don't have things like unit testing, code reviews, etc.
In his long write up Steve made two points which I think are the most important:
1. Waterfall is known to be bad; I hope we can just that as an axiom today.
I added the emphasis on 'hope'. I hope so too, but I'm afraid the end of Agile might mean the triumphant return of Waterfall.
2. Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective. They take things like unit testing, design documents and code reviews more seriously than any other company I've even heard about. They work hard to keep their house in order at all times, and there are strict rules and guidelines in place that prevent engineers and teams from doing things their own way. The result: the whole code base looks the same, so switching teams and sharing code are both far easier than they are at other places.
Google sounds like an exceptionally disciplined software-engineering company indeed! This to me implies they do NOT need Agile.
Why would you introduce something designed to professionalize software-engineering to a company which is super disciplined and professional? You wouldn't! The only thing you can introduce is bullshit like 8:00 AM meetings. No wonder Steve hates Agile so much.
But again, everything he says about it being an infomercial and aimed at stupid people is true. But it is still a God send if this meme virus infects a death march plagued Waterfall process which does not use unit testing or even has source control.
Now why would a good developer be suck in such a place? Well maybe you live in an area where there is not a lot of tech. industry and jobs. Maybe you live there because all your family and friends are from there. Maybe your child has severe asthma and you can't afford to leave the gold plated health insurance plan from your corporate job in a non-software company that's big enough to have a software department.
I can't quite imagine how Agile could help a company like Google. But I know how it can be a great benefit to much less disciplined companies.
And I really do fear that the end of Agile means the return of Waterfall. Because Waterfall intuitively makes sense to people who don't understand software engineering. And there are a lot of them outside of silicon valley.
And Waterfall doesn't just plague obscure places with no tradition of technology. The US north east, home to MIT, IBM and formerly DEC, Waterfall has always been big out here too, and it's not because we're not smart.