Can you quantify that? Honest question - Android does not seem like a small project to me, but perhaps it really is dwarfed by Google's web services.
What you wrote reminded me of a feeling I had: that these projects are these weird exceptions, only nominally part of Google. They have their own policies (style guide, code review, etc), have their own hardware, etc. The Android building even had their own desks (non-adjustable!)
In terms of percentage of engineers, by far the majority are working in Google3 ("monorepo"). Android and Chrome are the big exceptions, because they are open source projects, but most of us don't work on them.
You can quantify it. Look at the numbers in the OP article, and thinking about how small Android must be: (1) all of Android code fits on a single smartphone (2) Android apps all have a corresponding server side.
What you wrote reminded me of a feeling I had: that these projects are these weird exceptions, only nominally part of Google. They have their own policies (style guide, code review, etc), have their own hardware, etc. The Android building even had their own desks (non-adjustable!)