What I got out of the article is "Google isn't offering a product I want." Yeah, there's an element of "this is the product I do want" involved in that. I think Google's criticized because people who are dissatisfied with Facebook hoped Google would challenge Facebooks flaws, not duplicate them.

Google may well have put all sorts of deep thought into it--but if they're just going to duplicate unliked features of a product that users merely tollerate without offering any real incremental value, why should they deserve to succeed?