One important factor that Americans might miss is the ubiquity of electric kettles. We run 230V nominal (in practice still 240V) mains, and 3KW kettles are standard, so boiling water is much faster than it would be in the US.
There's also no real value in (say) a company offering highly premium tea to their workers - specifically although there is a bit of a hierarchy with tea (Basics, PG Tips, Yorkshire, Twinings (which specifically tastes different in America, so far as I can work out)), if you grab a big box of Yorkshire Tea (<5p per tea bag, less if you buy in bulk) no one has any reason to complain, and the picky person will bring their own tea to work.
This is quite unlike coffee, where there's a big trend towards hipstery coffee shops.
I'll definitely check out your machine the next time I'm in Palo Alto!