Yonatan Zunger claims that Vic Gundotra approved the change.
edit: I'm being downvoted, but remember that Vic is the one who pushed the names policy in the first place.
So if you still don't think that's enough to believe it, well, that's your prerogative, but I doubt anything is going to convince you in that case.
That said, do you know what evidence made Vic push the names policy in the first place?
No idea on evidence question.
I have a hard time believing that a single person at Google (Vic) would be given so much free reign to make policy changes based on how it "felt" without having a shred of evidence. Unless I'm misunderstanding?
At this point I doubt a name free-for-all is going to swell the occupancy.