It's not a terrible argument. To put it differently, the value to the end user is not a direct function of the degree of openness, but the utility of the degree of openness.
That part isn't, yes. Most people don't care how open (as in freedom) their device is. They care how open (as in they can use it well). This is a decent argument. However, I think it's ridiculous to suggest that the Android model is vastly different and more complicated than iOS's. Installing an app on Android is virtually the exact same as iOS, and being able to install from other sources is optional and adds zero complexity to installing from the market. Apple has definitely made iOS seem easier to install apps to, but that has more to do with their excellent design and marketing than the fact that their market is locked down.
The part in the title about "The iPad is 99% more open" is 100% semantic bullshit (which happens to be a pet peeve of mine, obviously). Additionally, "None of this crap about it being closed is accurate." is wrong because he's talking about open (as in accesible) while the people he's saying are wrong talking about it being closed (as in freedom). No one was making the argument that it's not accessible to users, so it's a strawman. I don't think it was intentional though, just a failure to think about the fact that he's using a completely different definition than the people he's arguing against.
He does have a point, but it's also stuck in the middle of this confusion over terms. His argument that "None of this crap about it being closed is accurate." is indeed completely wrong, because that claim was never made. The point about the perceived complexity is correct, but again I don't think that has to do with the inability to install from other sources.
I personally would not be able to convince myself that my side project's execution is /better/ than something MetaLab (or any of the many companies I admire) built, but certainly it would be better suited to my personal itches.
That is not intended to be a comment on your execution though, I don't know what you've built.
What I would try to do is refine the niche that I am satisfying. There are a ton of task management applications out there, which means that there is a large number of ways people like to track and do their tasks, which means that something that solves your particular problems very well is going to satisfy more.
Interesting that they managed to use "marketwatch.com" as the display URL at the bottom of the ad. If the link is going to the goldfellow URL first, then then the display url should match goldfellow. It is another violation of Adwords policy if your display URL and destination URL are different.
(Although in this case, I guess the destination URL is marketwatch.com.... eventually. But if they are using the redirect this Adwords user did not enter a display URL that matched the destination URL they entered.)
The whole history of Google is trying to find algorithms that encode our philosophy and mental model of what we think users want. We've been discussing algorithmic changes with people online since 2001, when GoogleGuy would show up on webmasterworld.com to dispel misconceptions.
This algorithm change could come across as more editorial and less empirical. It's publicized as highly targeted ("slightly over 2% of queries"), responding to small tech discussion (Atwood, SO, HN, quality launch meeting), and seemingly rolled out in a short period of time. The media could easily boil this down to "a small number people felt sites they liked were under-ranked, so Google moved them up a week later."
I mention this because Google often talks publicly about being entirely algorithmic, and elements of this narrative feel human.
2% of queries is huge. If you average that across a population (which of course isn't how it's actually distributed...), a searcher could expect to run across such a query every few days.
