The title is wrong. They don't bet. It is deeper in the article. They are actually hedging their bets and can afford to loose that money.
Buy real-estate outside of the city.
Short the stock and/or buy Put options.
I wouldn't take the opposite side of Google's bet. They're spending a couple of billion on the bet. GOOG, AAPL, FB, that's about a week's worth of earnings to them. And if they're wrong, they have a depreciable asset that they can spend the next 30 years writing down. NBD.