Not the author, but I don't think so.

That was 2006, back when neural networks were still being laughed at.

It was in 2012 that AlexNet showed the world that neural networks could actually be a useful solution. After that, other labs that worked with neural networks took inspiration and managed to get other amazing results in 2013-2015, culminating with the ResNet architecture.

In this 2012-2015 that one of Google Labs working with NNs decided to repackage their internal tools into TensorFlow. A bit latter, Facebook put PyTorch together.

The influence the Netflix challenge had on all this was maybe just attracting attention to AI / Data Science and to competitions.