That's interesting, because I actually found the article pretty impressive considering the timing. It's easy to look back 13 years later and laugh at the title, but some of the finer points were pretty insightful. Many parts of the article are very foretelling, even if they weren't the personal opinion of the author.

For example, pointing out that using text ads over graphical ones improved the speed and was an important aspect for users is noteworthy, as well as Brin and Page's insistence that focusing on the technology would bring users and, in turn, ad revenue is as well. This article was written just a couple of years after a major crash of tech stocks that had absolutely no way to make a buck, so some skepticism was in order, I believe. In fact the vast majority of .com's were not profitable so it's not as if a company that at the time was trailing Yahoo! and Overture and barely profitable was inevitably going to become the Google we know today.