What makes you think software that produces and rolls out configuration files is something complicated?
I don't doubt that Google's infrastructure is as complicated and nuanced as it can get. Configuration software just simply isn't.
I still don't really see the point you're trying to make here. There isn't enough detail in the two sentences they gave us on the actual cause of the problem to really say much more in any further detail than I did.
But I guess that just proves my other point. Postmortem was 90% fluff.
Yet in googles defence, the information they gave was thorough enough for me. My only gripe was how it was being treated here. It just wasn't a very interesting situation and turned out to be something quite mundane.
Because you have an apparently incredibly simple mental model for the system and so of course tests for it seem simple?