Maybe these toads need to get beyond the Unix/Windows would and deal with the real world
The Google folks don't get out much, do they? If you have to deal with non-Unix systems, ssh and sftp are not widely available, and it's not a trivial coding exercise. FTP has been mandated as part of the TCP client suite since the 1970s, and can be relied on to be present everywhere (you may not run it, but you can bet the business do).
For Mike, NJE over TCP isn't that hard to implement. It works just fine, supports encryption, and is completely documented. Unlike ssh/scp/sftp. If you have to look at the source code of another implementation, it's not ready to be a proper Internet standard.