I've been developing for Android since 2007 and doing NDK development since that was available and I've seen my fair share of library trouble. I've learned that when Google "encourages" you to do something it's code speak for "you better stick to this or we'll guarantee for nothing".

As to why the installer failed to unpack the libraries, it's a bit suspicious that the article doesn't mention an investigation of the root cause nor called it a bug on Google's end. My hunch is that the root cause is somewhere in between making some un-documented moves in Android.mk and how the package generator picks up the libraries.