I'm not defending the author or his position, but I don't find that dismissal very compelling either.
As a reader one of the first problems I had was that the criticism of Ebay as an invention is reasonable.
I also thought it was funny to bring up the ages of the various justices, point out that it didn't reflect their technological savvy and then move on to other things, never to come back again.
"'I may not be a software developer, but as I read the invention [of eBay], it’s displaying pictures of your wares on a computer network and, you know, picking which ones you want and buying them.' [Chief Justice Roberts] next said about the multibillion-dollar Internet corporation: 'I might have been able to do that.'"
That statement is reasonable to this software developer.
edit:
"In a recent oral argument about a computer-implemented, electronic escrow service, Justice Kennedy asked whether 'a second-year college class in engineering” or 'any computer group of people sitting around a coffee shop in Silicon Valley” could write the code for it 'over a weekend.' The lawyer said yes, to the dismay of many in the industry."
I completely lack dismay. Couldn't any computer group of people sitting around a coffee shop in Silicon Valley write an electronic escrow application over the weekend?
Similarly the dismay of many in the industry thing. The author wants comp sci to be some kind of arcane lore that olds cant possibly understand because they're not hip enough. Tech stuff is also presented as kind of a black box that can't be compared to anything but itself, and if you aren't using silicon valley jargon 24/7 you just dont get it. The person who wrote the article in the OP is a tech cultist rather than a reasonable thinker.
Your edit came after my other reply; I think it actually is the case that a group of computer people sitting in a coffee shop could sketch out an escrow system over the weekend. I guess they wouldn't want to run a business on it, but the shape of it could be there, no problem.
But there are standard techniques for scaling and high availability. The patent simply covers the essence of the application itself. And I agree with you, demo-quality prototypes of auction and escrow apps are pretty easy to write.
Plus didn't the courts just rule that taking an abstract idea, like an auction market, and adding "on the computer" (or presumaby "on the internet") doesnt make it patentable?