? The author specifically mentions companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Plus the point isn't that one company will replace Google, it's that Google isn't positioned to take advantage of the next wave of online advertising - digital brand advertising.

And Google is not 3M. They have not proven to any significant degree that any of their research projects will provide lasting value to the company. In fact, almost all of their successful non-search products were acquisitions, not the result of internal R&D. Android was an acquisition; Maps was an acquisition; Docs was an acquisition.