Hm, that's idealistic...

I've certainly run into cases where small changes in general systems led to hard-to-detect bugs, which took a great deal of investigation to figure out. Not all failures are catastrophic.

The technology is quite alive, which is why it hasn't been 'fixed' - changing the wheels on a moving car, and all that. The actual disappointment is that a better alternative hasn't taken off in the six years since this post was written... If its so easy, where's the alternatives?

That's not idealistic, that's how arithmetics work. If you use the same generic thing more times, you have the higher chance of discovering it broken. The fact that you've run into cases means that chance is never zero, and is irrelevant to the discussion.

As was already mentioned in the article, PB solve a problem that likely only Google has, even if that. State of the art nowadays is JSON/JSONL. If it grows too large, gzip it.

When someone is using third-party closed proprietary technologies to be "not like the rest", it usually doesn't work that well for their business.

The technology is "alive" until it didn't follow the path of Closure, GWT, and the rest of "we use it on the most loaded page of the world" technology. PB will be on the same graveyard soon.