I'm not sure one has to go to the extreme of huge scale, anywhere near where Google is now, (not that that's what you said), nor all the aspects of their culture, but I agree that key fundamental aspects are often missed.
My favorite example is to point out that Google does not run Hadoop on expensive, virtualized AWS instances (or even brand-name servers with useless-for-purpose features[1] that creep up the cost). Rather, one of their competitive advantages, from the very start, has been to optimize hardware that they purchase, customize, and operate for cost (and performance).
The other is, as you mention, culture, which involves a remarkable amount of specialization, with groups dedicated to hardware, networking, internal tooling (i.e. building and maintaining the Hadoop-euquivalent), and, of course, SRE, who couldn't even begin to do their jobs without all those other groups' support.
Of course, there's an argument to be made that things like k8s and PaaS/IaaS can take the place of all those supporting groups at Google, but my counterargument is that they both fail to impart any benefit of customization (or, conversely cultural benefit of the mindset of doing everything that way across the entire company) and carry a tremendous cost (in money and complexity).
[1] redundant power supplies, high-density chasses, onboard hardware RAID
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