It's generally not considered Googley to smuggle soda out of the office. Nobody will stop you because Google by-and-large trusts their employees, but I've heard coworkers complain about people who take home food from the microkitchens, and I've gotten friendly ribbing when I brought a microkitchen soda to an off-site where everyone else was drinking beer (which I don't drink).
Not so much in Seattle, but in MTV people seemed to raid the MKs on their way out of the office. It felt like some sort of communal effort to ensure that the next day's stock would all be fresh.
I think this may have been one of those cultural changes that happens when you double the size of the company in 2 years and norms are not explicitly stated...
I started as a Noogler in 2009 and my original cubemate was a pre-IPO Googler who started around 2002. I asked him what some of the biggest changes have been since he started, and he said that there was less of a feeling of community and more of one of entitlement. The snacks in the microkitchen was a specific example he used, that in the beginning everyone understood they were for office use only but around 2006-2007 he started to see people stockpiling them.
More generally - the perks you get as a Googler are not because you were so awesome that Google decided to hire you. They're there to build a sense of community and common purpose. General guideline for when something's okay: Are you in this together with your coworkers, or are you in it alone?
