I found the entire article to be effing hilarious. Great writing style. And useful info too- I work in a place where we encounter this stuff, and it really is all about asking the right questions.
tl;dr: Google uses Big Data techniques because they have a problem to solve, unnamed companies X,Y,Z try making a business out of just the Big Data techniques without a problem to solve, and this pisses the guy off.
I'm sorry, but all I see here is a giant strawman. Which companies is he talking about? What are examples where they've claimed to be using big data in an unjustified way?
As a stats person, I've seen lots of job postings for "data scientists" that are along the lines of "We need someone to turn our massive amount of data into profit!" I hesitate to name names, but if you search for data scientist jobs you will see what I'm talking about. My reaction is always, "Great, but what business question are you trying to answer?"
no connection no real reference to anything. this is nothing more than self-adulation of someone who thinks he knows the truth about a certain topic. how foolish and shortsighted!
[1] Yeah, one could argue that Ted himself is an unfunny Ted Dziuba, but that's a different debate.