Well, the Verge has never been keen on giving BlackBerry the benefit of the doubt. The bit about "runs google" I think was an attempt to make it clear that it's not just an "Android Runtime" like on BB10, but has access to Google Mobile Services including the Play store and all the apps therein.
Chen's English is better than my Chinese, so I certainly won't fault his linguistic skills, but maybe there should be a native English speaker from the management team that does point on these things... or is at least standing nearby to interject when Chen isn't clear.
Not having a device that was set up to be used for demos was inexcusable, unless this was totally a spur-of-the-moment thing in which case SOMEONE should have said "stall a bit: I have to go through the device setup first." BNN would have waited for a world exclusive of demoing the device... but no one in his entourage had the presence of mind to realise that the device wasn't in a demo-ready state.
Now, if that happened to Steve Jobs... what do you suppose would have happened? I'm thinking...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G75OmHJmRM