Airbnb - I only use my place 90% of the year, but I pay for using it 100% of the year. Coke - Water doesn't taste very good. Apple/MS - secretaries are expensive. Can they be automated?
Similarly, Apple/MS must have found an early market of professionals to sell to that need excel, calculators, whatever - solving a problem for them.
You don't start by automating out secretaries. You start by solving a problem for an existing set of people.
Generally when people talk about 'creating opportunity's' they just mean solving problems that people don't think of as problems.
In that context Google's quest to 'organize the worlds information' is really just solving the gap between what humanity knows and what you know. EX: Someone knows where the closest ATM is, but you have no idea. Someone knows what error code 237b means and what to do next, but you don't.