I'm a lawyer. I get paid a lot to communicate directly and precisely. While many people in our field are viewed as assholes, the best of us are able to be blunt while also being tactful. Being an engineer isn't an excuse for communicating poorly or having your tone override your message. Luckily this is a trait that can be worked on - I used to have the same issue and am getting better.

Let me take a deeper look at what's irking you: You state Google may have had a valid reason to do what it did. Okay. Let's conceed that. Despite that concession, does that actually address the problem you raised?

1) Google may have, despite having had a reason to do what it did, done it for the wrong reason. The timing of advertising which specifically required the negative effect of the change upon Edge's metrics certainly seems to point that way. You've described a plausible alterative rationale for their actions, but nothing more than that.

2) Incentivewise, Google has every desire in the world to maintain their browser marketshare numbers.

3) The full claim made by the intern is that this was one of an onslaught of changes made by Google to make their sites less performant on other browsers. Other people in the same thread indicated similar issues, and Google staff indicated that they were actually planning on resolving some of these issues in the future, an admission that the issues do, in fact, exist.

4) The intern further makes an allegation that the Edge team attempted to inform Google about the behavior, but did not receive any redress or explanation regarding the issue. One would expect that the Youtube team would have raised the issues you addressed regarding Edge's handling in a quick reply. They didn't.

Overall, if you were Google staff, your objection would deal with a number of these points I've raised, but as it stands that isn't the case.

I did appreciate the article's technical discussion, though, so thank you for that insight.