"According to the company’s 2013 financial filings, 83 percent of Google’s revenue came from ads, about 7 percent from Motorola (which is now gone), and 10 percent from everything else. In other words, when you add up all the revenue from Google Apps (Gmail, Docs, Drive, Maps, etc.) together with the Android and other mobile businesses, and then add Chromebooks, Chromecast, Chromeboxes, and everything hardware and everything Chrome, Google Developers Network, Google+, Google cars, Google robots and drones, Google Glass and other wearables, Google Cloud, and everything else in the Google world, you get $5 billion or 10 percent of Google’s revenue."
is completely wrong because Google's ad revenue cannot be separated from its products outside of Search. Google+, Gmail, Docs, Drive, Maps, Android and Chrome are all designed to add to their ad revenue. Saying that Google's ad revenue is the vast majority of their non-Motorola revenue, therefore Google's non-Search products must not be adding much to the bottom line is to conflate Google's advertising businesss with their Search product, when Search is one of their many products that lead to their advertising revenue.
Once you destroy this premise, this whole notion that Search is the only thing Google does well (or makes a lot of money from) becomes obviously absurd. Gmail, Google Maps, Android, Youtube and Chrome are all market leaders in absolutely gigantic markets.
Edit: The synergy between many of Google's products and advertising should be obvious. They all capture information about the user, which improves their ability to display "relevant" ads or at least ads that advertisers will pay more money for. They also prevent other dominant players in that space from getting a foothold in advertising. Chrome and Android ensure that Google's various services are not a disadvantage on the web and in mobile computing respectively and may gradually be used to advantage their services over competitors'.
Edit2: jjoonathan, your point regarding Amazon and competitive threats they face is correct, but it has very little to do with the article, which is taking Google's successful position for granted and asking how they got there. And the idea that Gmail, Maps, Android and Chrome haven't helped and won't help in the future is fairly absurd.
Edit3: Multiple downvotes seem a little fishy, as does this article getting voted to the top of Hacker News.
Edit4: Another thing the article is ignoring is that Google's continued dominance in search and web advertising is a massive accomplishment that was not at all guaranteed from its initial success. And its massive investment in engineering that the author sees as excess I'm sure has a lot to do with how it was able to sustain that dominance.