In principle I think it's fine, but from the story it sounds like the decision-making process was busted.

What I've found is that companies that live or die by data don't have better arguments, necessarily, they just have different arguments.

At the end of the day it's about someone making a decision and taking responsibility for it. Sometimes forward momentum and the feelings of your employees are more important than minute details like that.

The story was more about Marissa Meyer's ego and how she uses the data-driven process at Google to frustrate her internal enemies, IMO, and less about the specific fact that they tested 41 shades of blue.

Personally I'd just make a decision and get on with it. If, for whatever reason, we thought the shade of blue would really, really matter you can always test it latter.

The risk of being data-driven is that you wind up in a world of Cartesian uncertainty. Do I really know ANYTHING? What if this thing I don't think matters really DOES matter? Doesn't that mean I should test every detail no matter how small?

Anyhow, these are issues you have to grapple with when you commit to being data-driven.

There's no simple answer, although it's easy for Google to justify testing every single thing because they have a gargantuan amount of traffic and even an improvement of a fraction of a percent could mean millions of dollars in revenue won or lost.