You could call it a warm-up period, but the point is that period is pre-launch. I think it is fair to assume a team at Google worked on this project before launch as well. I don't know how long they did for, but they could have chosen to take the time to develop a better algorithm prior to launch as well. (Note: Google's historical use of the Beta tag, has made it effectively meaningless IMO.) For whatever reason they chose not to, and it's kind of surprising how poor a product they launched with.

Why do they think it is so important to get in this market ASAP? Perhaps under Page there is additional pressure to launch fast and early a la start-ups?

With that said, I have no idea if the quality of EN is as good as he claims.