Apples and Oranges. This is like the way bloggers used to compare facebook (the next AOL, like yahoo) with Google.
Google was founded based on a set of highly algorithmic methods for Search (part of today's AI), which is something that is extremely difficult to do correctly and even harder to duplicate (just ask Apple). Google never morphed into a 'content' site, like AOL. It was not founded based on easy-to-to duplicate code and content of others.
They've come a long a way in terms of real innovation and real technology in addition to revenue that is 10x greater than twitter, facebook, yahoo and others. Now add to this traffic reach, if you look at the top 10-20 sites on the net in terms of traffic, Google actually owns several of them including YouTube, Gmail etc. http://www.alexa.com/topsites Add to this an entire operating system that runs most of the worlds mobile devices. If you aggregate all their platforms and properties, it's orders of magnitude greater than any other.
There are deep technology companies and then there are not so deep technology companies that have limited lifespans.
Google probably has another 10 years before it begins to crumble within. Meanwhile and in a larger historical context, the new AOLs will come and go, repeating a cycle of duplicating one anothers content and so-called technology.
They are nowhere near even being close to Google in terms of revenue, technology, innovation, invention etc. After all, they started off just copying myspace and calling their users dumb f*cks. Facebook is the next AOL.
The examples from Muhammad's hair and the other mentioned actually have their roots from this more ancient example in the Bible:
"And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulcher of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet." 2 Kings 13:21
System and method for generating a relationship network - K Franks, CA Myers, RM Podowski - US Patent 7,987,191, 2011 - http://www.google.com/patents/US7987191
One of the reasons it's better is that it's slim and you can find it on just about every linux box in the world. Stuck in Borneo with a linux box the local tribe has that not yet connected to the world until you create a script or edit some net config files? Vi is your tool. Emacs? Nowhere to be found.
Spotify got this from Berkeley Lab who were doing it in 2005 "Word2Vec is based on an approach from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab" https://www.kaggle.com/c/word2vec-nlp-tutorial/forums/t/1234... which is interesting because the original streaming music site, seeqpod, who powered spotify, was based on vectors for songs, like a song2vec.
Using the zoom tool recommended in the article really provides perspective. Especially when you see those stars clustered close together when each of them are really millions of miles apart (aside from the binaries) with possible planets orbiting them. Now consider the billions of galaxies out there. I'm positive there's an Alien or two there as well.