I've been in data centers hosting Google systems. This picture looks very similar if not identical to what I've seen, so I'd say it is most definitely real.
Could you verify if Google still uses Hitachi Deskstar drives?
I recall reading an article about the testing Google conducted to find the most reliable drives, but they refused to publish the findings.
They did actually publish their results. It's an interesting read:
That paper does not mention any specific brands or models.
I wasn't ever close enough to see what kind of disks they were.
Based on their white paper on MTBF of hard disks, I'd guess that they avoid favoring any single vendor to lower the chance of a bad batch of drives all failing at once.