Also, many Google developers do a big chunk of their development through SSH windows on a laptop working from home. Laptops have limited screen real estate anyway, and it's really handy to be able to use the default PuTTY terminal size and not have to screw around with resizing it.
It also makes life easier if you like to have several code windows open side by side while you work. I got introduced to this approach a few years ago by a colleague and I've loved it ever since (I actually use vertical splits in Vim FWIW; same difference...).
