Earlier quoted context omitted.
I heard it quite frequently, but not from people that worked there. I believe that there was a published style guide. My experience is years old, but I remember seeing that it was basically “C++ without objects.” It’s a great language, and the 20 additions bring it right on par with other languages, in terms of type and memory safety.
The style guide is publicly available: https://google.github.io/styleguide/cppguide.html I've never heard anything remotely similar to "avoid objects" here.
I like the Google style guide overall. I tend to use it on new projects even though I'm not there anymore, and when I get into other people's code often my first instinct is to "clean it up" into that style :-)