(Cause I've got a diamond here - I'd probably be best mentioning I'm a moderator, and none of this should be taken to be official at all)
Well, not quite in the way that you think it is, and certainly not the one in question. As long time user of the network, I've seen the role of the blog change a few times. Both Jeff and Joel were bloggers and Jeff tended to use it primarily as a way to announce stuff. I kinda miss that.
It kinda drifted over to being something I strongly did not approve of, and frankly it's something that will take time to fix. So, the blogs have been ads for a while. Just not posts like these.
While some blogs are ads (like those talking about Teams Success Stories) - many posts are basically filler. They feel like they're meant to create content easily, and hopefully will keep developers (and that's the intended audience still) interested until, well, more network relevant content can be produced. Thankfully there's less of these.
SE has a problem. Blogging is hard. I've had someone on staff talk about how you'd need to have regular content - and getting guest writers is one way to do it.
I suspect the folks who run the blog consider this to be something folks would find interesting. A quick look at his twitter suggests he's something like a CM - and well having SE data in big query is a little known SE side project, and might be useful as an alternative to SEDE in finding stuff out about the network as a whole. It's... actually somewhat relevant.
It's a tool that folks don't know about (It's been around since 2016) and considering how folks occasionally bring SEDE to its knees, it can be useful. It isn't an ad for Google as much as it's an ad for another tool for the SE power user.
I'd love to see old school blog posts - like the ones we used to have in the old days but, well, there's a certain investment to be made there. Messaging aside... amusingly moving announcements to the blog is a reversion to how things used to be.
Practically - you'd need to find someone seriously in touch with the community, with sufficient time during work to churn out a blog post every couple of weeks, and have actual writing talent to do that sort of thing... and well, have actual stuff to talk about.
SE is pretty mature software so there's going to be less fundamental changes than there were (and they're less interesting until they are done... even if we're the sort of people who watch database upgrades live).
