I agree. The part that bugged me about the article was it took a quote:

'The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.'

Then immediately launched into saying

'Tech critics should be very careful what they wish for when they say that they wish that tech companies would tackle the "real" problems'.

I think this misses the point. I don't think critics are clamoring for tech companies to "solve" real problems. They want people, smart people, to focus on solving these problems.

A company doesn't solve anything people solve things not organisations.

He could have just as easily talked about all those PHD physicists working on High frequency trading and used that to launch into a tangent about how Wall Street is not suited to solving difficult problems.

The original quote is a serious issue publicly funded R&D outfits cannot offer the financial incentives large banks, tech outfits and other private organisations can offer.

Whether you think this is a good thing or not depends on how cynical you are I suppose. Personally I'm skeptical that private research interests will ever align with anything other than creating value for shareholders - which for google means selling more Ads...

I'm hopeful that we'll exhaust the low-hanging fruit of social networks and advertising sometime soon, and the best returns will need to come from solving some other problems.

I agree. While I found the article compelling, on reflection, the issue is that it doesn't at any point reflect on the fact of ever increasing rate of corporate capture of people's productivity (and wealth, though that's a separate if related issue).

The sentiment that it's responding to isn't addressed to the tech companies doing tech company things, it's addressed to the system that lionizes and entrenches the creation of wealth for wealth's sake.

To say that Google and Microsoft only make operating systems and sell adds is a bit misleading. Both company's are constributing significantly to the development of Artificial Intelligence and quantum computers. These technologies are fundamental and pivotal to the success of humanity.