Some of those are programs that are open to any company in any accelerator.
http://aws.amazon.com/activate/
http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/
http://www.softlayer.com/catalyst
Not really a reason to pick techstars over another program
When was this a debate about picking techstars over any other program? The article relates to picking nothing as opposed to joining TechStars. I think these perks are a little harder to come by when you turn an accelerator down for the no op as opposed to "I picked accelerator B instead of accelerator A".
I'd tell you that if you wanted to do an apples to apples comparison of accelerators we should save that for another thread lest we get too off topic, but that hasn't stopped others in this thread from turning the article into a TS vs Other Accelerator debate, so why should it stop you?
Not sure why you feel so passionately about this.
Yep, TechStars is just one of many incubators and accelerators we've partnered with (and we're happy to take more):
https://cloud.google.com/startupsI guess it's to avoid having to vet each request individually.
Accepting them without any check means I'd create a new "startup" for each random page I put on the internet just to get free stuff, but having to verify each request may become a pain point quickly. Being part of an accelerator means that the work has been done by someone else.
* (both programs give addtl resources if you're in an accelerator though - amazon portfolio package and bizspark plus respectively)