He's wrong though -- many of those things were around early on. Charlie (the chef) was hired in 1999, long before Google was the dominant anything. The notion that treating your employees well isn't "scalable" is nonsense.

The question, Paul, I have for you (and other Googlers/ex-Googlers reading along) is this: Is it really the perks or the people that make a successful company recognizable? Shouldn't a company's actions and performance always speak louder than its scooters and ping pong tables lining the hallway?

I think this causality (smart people -> smart idea -> smart execution -> profitability -> more tweaks -> dominance) seems more realistic than what the author intended to document.

Thinking of these things as "perks" is the first mistake. Is having a chair and a good computer a "perk"? For some jobs perhaps, but for people writing software they are a lot more important (though I'm sure someone will dispute that chairs are necessary). Likewise, good food and other environmental factors are very significant.