If a simple C++ server is left in such a poor state, it stands to reason, how can there be a culture of C++ excellence? Why wasn't someone assigned to maintain the server? A culture is everybody, not just a few brilliant individuals or teams.
I'll just go ahead and call a spade a spade and say that this is a stupid line of conversation, and it's pretty clear that you know it.
Not only did the person you originally responded to even qualify with a "for the most part" -- thus allowing for the existence of bad code in said C++ culture -- every significant codebase in the verse has a neglected corner or three. Moreover, one man's "globally crappy" code is another man's halfway-decent code. We have no way of identifying how bad the code was, just that it was stalling a whole CPU without doing anything while I/O bound.
Finally, your whole point is ridiculous, because the slide deck you link is about finding a part of the codebase that has accumulated extreme cruft and replacing it with a new, clean implementation, which is exactly how you maintain a healthy codebase.
It was the server which allowed customers to download Google software onto their computers.
If your download server was slow and randomly disconnecting transfers for no good reason, resulting in potential customers giving up, wouldn't it be important?
You're blowing things way out of proportion because you don't have any idea what you're talking about.
It was a server involved in a fraction of Google's downloads comprising an even smaller fraction of Google's total egress. It took URLs of one form and redirected them to URLs of another form, where other C++ servers written by a staffed team (mine) actually redirected them to the actual C++ servers (again, deployed and maintained by my team) which deliver the downloads.
haberman wasn't talking about the state of Google's C++ codebase in 2005; he was talking about the state of Google's C++ codebase in 2014. This server was written years ago, using libraries that were years old at the time it was written. It wasn't maintained, and no team was responsible for it. The core libraries on which it was based were replaced by the libraries haberman lauded.
The only reason you can even try to use this server as an example is because you have no clue what you're talking about.
I fully concur with haberman about the state of C++ at Google.