In defense of the list, I don't think it was intended as a blueprint for becoming a well-rounded and educated person, it was meant to provide a curriculum for learning the sort of technical skills people at Google would like to see in a candidate.
That said, there's actually a tremendous amount to learn on this list, and there are only so many cells to hold information. While it's always nice to say "and yes, also learn history and literature", truth is, eventually you have to not learn something in order to learn these things.
This may be a case where where the extreme rigor of the interview process and tolerance of false negatives may hurt large companies and create an opportunity for small startups and individuals. Here's why - a candidate who is very very talented at CS but also learned history and literature might come in at 90%ile, but let's say it's nearly impossible to come in higher than that without neglecting those other topics. However, the interviewers are all demanding a 95%ile+ performance. As a result, they pass on the more well rounded candidate.
It's even more insidious than this - because they select for the 95%ile, and it is very very rare to be able to achieve this feat without a single minded focus on CS, the people doing the interviewing will be at best faintly aware, and possibly completely unaware, of what they are missing.
Before getting too irritated, though, remember that any blind spot on the part of a large company is an opportunity for a small, nimble one. This is largely what is going on, I think, when you read those stories about talented programmers getting rejected by google and Facebook and coming back 5 years later to sell them a company for 100 times what their salary would have been. Of course, it's a much higher risk path that requires being broke for a while, and may just not be an option for people with other substantial life obligations.
There's this story I really liked about Andre 3000 (sorry, no link, just something I read, may be apocryphal). During an interview, he was asked how he chose the three chords for the song, and his answer was that he was learning guitar and those were the three chords he knew so far. So he took just the slightest bit of knowledge and turned into something great.
I read this at a time when I went to a music store and saw an incredible guitarist doing such impressive things with his instrument that he drew a small crowd. He wasn't just showing off, he was the local instructor. I believe he was also available for small gigs, weddings, parties, that sort of thing.
A lot of companies would pass on Andre 3000[1], and hire the awesome guitar playing dude, because Andre 3000 wouldn't be able to play a Bflat scale on demand or explain the circle of fifths or sight read a medium complexity piece of music at at least 150bpm. And I'm not knocking those skills, if you're a musician, by all means, yes, learn those things. But if that's all you focus on, to the exclusion of more creative things (and there's enough complexity that you could easily do so), you will starve other important things.
[1] prior to the hit. eventually, accomplishments do speak for themselves.