I have a self-congratulating black belt in source code archeology. With the right tools, most of which are on GitHub, even, such as good commit range diffing, smart uses of tags and branches, and knowing how to navigate the DAG from merge commits (more reason to -no-ff) you have a lot of power in your hands.

«What's truly meaningful IMO is a git log that reads like a product change log»

I appreciate that point of view, but I don't share it. A product change log, I feel, is a bit of marketing/PR that needs some time, love, and editing; I find a git log is for catching snapshots of raw progress and more often useful in seeing what your co-developers are up to, as they are working.