You're confusing a few issues here.

You are required to have a grounding electrode system. This consists of any number of things which if present MUST be connected, but you must have at least ONE. This includes your underground metal water pipe, an earth connected metal building structure, concrete cased electrodes, ground rings, ground rods and other electrodes. This provides the LEGAL ground for the building.

Typically this is in the form of the two rod electrodes which is supplemented by the metal water pipe when present. The size of the interconnection of your grounding system depends on the size of your service entrance conductors It's not necessarily 4 AWG. Yes, if the water meter or other junction makes the water piping discontinuous, you need to bond around those insulating fixtures.

Then in addition to the above, there are a number of things that need to be bonded to make sure that they stay at a safe potential rather than becoming possibly energized. This includes just about every electrical raceway, enclosure, junction box, any exposed building metal structure, and all the building metalic water piping and any other metal piping. The codes have varied over the year about how gas piping was treated, but as of 2014 it's back in the list of MUST be bonded if likely to become energized category. Again, you need to make sure that all things are properly bonded which may mean bonding around things like hot water heaters, water treatment devices, water meters, and any dielectric unions.

I am curious as to where you read this. There are no major changes in this part of the NEC and wonder what makes you ask this.

Agreed with Petey....about the only thing I recall changing on this subject in the last few versions of the code was the part of about gas pipes as already mentioned.