Mostly just trying to avoid an awkward gotcha moment where someone digs through my comment history, finds a reference to my employer, and accuses me of some sort of shilling.

I've seen it happen to other people and IMO it's better to go with the lame disclaimer.

There's quite a bit of news stories that start of with "Googlers <verb> ..." which is based on the comments of a couple employees.

Better to just play it safe.

Or even speaking on behalf of a significant part of Google employees. The hubris of HN Googlers is astounding, sometimes.