It looks like a fairly standard Phd student resume to me. I don't really see much extra in it. Yes there are some published papers, but so have many Phd students. Regarding google success, I would say him studying the right subject and doing the right things (start a startup) mattered much more than his CV and interests.
the two papers he got published were in VLDB and SIGMOD, which are the two top conferences in databases and data management ... even pre-google, this guy had cred!
The movie review idea is very interesting. It sounds like what Netflix is doing.<p>I hate to be one of those crazy predictors, but I wonder if Google will ever partner with Netflix on that topic. It seems like a good idea.