Actually, I've been misunderstood. It's not Google that I tear to pieces at every opportunity, but the comically awful managers who watch terrorist attacks on TV and then think, "I'd like to do that to a company!" If Google cleaned house, it could be a great company and a cultural leader again.
There are a lot of things I admire about Google, and I think highly of most of the engineers. 95% of the engineers I met there I would gladly work with again.
In fact, I would recommend most people I know, if they get a Google offer, to take it. I would give them the gory details so they are prepared for what may happen, but if you join Google and end up on a good project that gives you visibility, it's a great place to work. Sure, there are unethical managers, but they aren't all bad. Why shouldn't they give the place a try?
The whistleblowing that I engaged in was in response to (a) incidents of management doing things it knew were counterproductive, to costs in the millions of dollars, just to keep rank, and (b) upper management refusing to discipline people for doing things that were immensely unethical.
What's amazing to me is that people will go to the mat to defend a huge company, when what they're actually doing is defending its rather abysmal management, which wouldn't do a thing for them.
Let me say it like this: Google is a fine company in most ways. It has built some excellent products, and the internal engineering tools are great. There's an incredible amount of talent. However, becoming an Argentina for disgraced technical managers who think constructs like "calibration scores" are a good idea is not a good business move.
If anyone is a friend of Google, it's me, because I've drawn light upon the managerial bloodsuckers that have been working to destroy the place.