I've seen a lot of their engineers here on HN defending Google's position, and very few of the anti-Google crowd here claim to be (x)googlers.

That said, I know a number of xooglers (myself included) who don't believe for a moment that this would have gotten off the ground if someone important hadn't opined on the usefulness WRT ad-serving.

I have seen engineers defend that position here and on Github, so unless you assume they're lying, I would take them at their word.

Of course not all of them do, Google is a big company.