> there's no denying that google recruiters covet fresh
  > college grads from well-known schools and your grades in
  > school are an important factor.

Sure, Google recruiters hit up Stanford and MIT just like every other tech company. But they don't reject candidates for having a non-ivy-league background.

  > I have major disagreements with your characterization
  > of how well the linux kernel upstreaming works (having
  > worked in that team)

From within the team it may have seemed bad, from from nearby teams it's apparent that there's a lot of progress in upstreaming. All of the cgroup stuff, for example, seems to be going in relatively smoothly.

  > other assertions about stock desktops (Stock Ubuntu ? Really ?)

Based on your LinkedIn you left in late 2012; there's been a lot of work with Canonical since then on reducing how much customization Google needs to do for its desktops.