What a load of malarkey. I'm really surprised they pay people to do this sort of journalism. It's just a guy making up a whole bunch of random hypothesis that don't line up with reality. It feels like he is trolling journalism.
Google is good at many things. One of the best things is to have a plan. Th second thing they are great at is if the plan fails to modify the plan and make it better. In short the likely hood of this being a failure is extremely unlikely. It's not even worth bringing up in regular conversation.