What the hell? He used an unsupported procedure to install software of unknown functionality, compatibility and provenance on his phone, and blames Google for bricking his device?
It's never been very clear what "open" means, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean "untrained persons can perform major surgery risk-free".
Here's the important sentence, and why the author has a point:
"if I was running a jailbroken iPhone, I'd just restore it with iTunes, and it would be factory-fresh with known software."
Apple tells you not to jailbreak, but they'll happily let you back in the house if you've gotten yourself into a mess. Google are telling power users that their OS is the hacker-friendly one, but leaves minefields for anyone who takes them at their word and tries to do what the author did.
I agree this write up is a bit silly but if we want to define an open platform it should probably be as open as x86 PCs. Who would buy a PC that locked you out of the BIOS and only booted a digitally signed / approved open source OS? That's basically what most of these Android phones are offering. I don't think that's good enough.
Once your carrier gets its hands on the phone, it's not gonna be open, no matter how badly Google wants it to be.
Let's give kudos to Google for making it possible for us to get open devices (either directly from Google, or through one of several niche manufacturers (I'm watching Always Innovating and the Open Pandora people here (also, I was a Lisp programmer in a former life))) and leave the blame where it really belongs: The carriers.
The hardest part of rooting my android phone was reactivating it via Verizon's minimally qualified tech support. (I'm pretty sure it is required for all baseband upgrades but even then you could just write down the steps and codes for the next time)
The most dangerous part was actually rooting the phone as I had to flash a downgrade then upgrade from the rooted downgrade, if I expected it to brick it was here.
I knew the risks however and this author doesn't seem to understand that this voids any warranty provided by the manufacturer and is most definitely not supported in any way other than instructions on how to do it.
How is this a story? The author happily acknowledges that android doesn't prevent you from being stupid, and then he complains that it doesn't prevent you from being stupid.
It's never been very clear what "open" means, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean "untrained persons can perform major surgery risk-free".