This line threw me too, but success is something that can be defined in a lot of ways. If you define success in terms of growth rate and speed from idea to market dominance and massive profits, then Google is right up there.
It all depends how you weight growth and total profit when you talk about "success." The growth curve of oil as a business took hundreds of years, whereas Google became a billion dollar business in a few years.
And that is why Wired seems to have become Gawker or Valleywag. There used to be some good journalism on Wired in the 1990s. Now it's a geek version of Vanity Fair...
It all depends how you weight growth and total profit when you talk about "success." The growth curve of oil as a business took hundreds of years, whereas Google became a billion dollar business in a few years.