I know that's what you meant and you absolutely have it backwards. These are the people who built some of the most iconic technology BEFORE building Plan 9. Are

I know that's what you meant and you absolutely have it backwards. These are the people who built some of the most iconic technology BEFORE building Plan 9. Are you seriously not familiar with their work on UNIX and C at Bell Labs? Because all of them were legends long before going to Google. Them going to Google was a big deal because of who they already were, not Google. If you're not old enough to remember their ideas being a big deal before they joined Google you need to go do some reading because you're lacking pretty real historical context.