> There are companies with data needs, user counts, and codebase sizes on par with Google that don't practice Google-style process, yet succeed anyway.

Which? The ones I can think of are Apple and Microsoft, and I'm pretty sure they practice Google-style process. Amazon has its own flavour of process which is heavyweight in its own way. What are you thinking of?

> Code-level concerns. You're not going to stop SQL injection by looking at some high-level design document. The same goes for r2l text layout bugs.

I notice you left out PII and other security implication, as well as design fit and finish. Those can easily be caught at design time, especially I18n bugs. For instance, the average east asian phrase is shorter (graphically) than the same phrase in a western language, and that all has to be translated and dealt with.

> It's easy to say that Google's codebase represents 18 years of work. I strongly suspect that it wouldn't take so long to do starting today

That's a strawman argument. Google has written reams of code for distributed computing (Borg), continuous integration (Tap + Blaze + Forge), code review tools (Mondrian, Critique).

That's like saying that although it took a decade to design the Boeing 737 (just a pretend example), it would take less time now. That is correct, but based on advancements on technology and materials, what's your point?

> Look at self-driving cars: how long has Google been working on them? How long has Uber? Whose cars are serving real-world passengers today?

That's a false comparison. Right now, Uber still has to have drivers behind the wheel, whereas Google self-driving cars strive for a higher level of autonomy. Also, Google has not wanted to get into a directly customer facing role, instead looking for partners to manufacture the cars.

> These things were unavailable (at least at adequate quality levels) when Google started its design culture.

Design culture evolves. Google wrote all of its own integration systems, code review tools, and many static analysis tools. Even though they have top class systems, they still stick to the same way of doing things. That's evidence that it works, and the process is roughly where it needs to be.

> When you see that a startup (or even another > $1 billion company) can do the same damn thing Google does

What's an example? Most startups/competitors to Google seems to do about 90% of the things that Google does for one business division, leaving aside the last 10%, which is naturally the hardest 10% to do.

> If developers feel like process is slowing them down, maybe you should listen to them.

Which developers? People looking in from the outside or actual Google engineers?

> It's easy to look at a few failures and conclude that you need to add process to fix whatever went wrong.

Interesting study on checklists. http://www.nature.com/news/hospital-checklists-are-meant-to-...

If you have institutional resistance towards checklists in hospitals (or process), introducing them doesn't help. But if you actually implement them correctly, they do eliminate many common mistakes.

A lot of companies use cargo-cult like process, thinking if they follow a magical recipe, they automatically get good results. I doubt Google is one of them