I know that Google engineers have a cushy life but I actually find it unlikely that a guy, who isn't attempting some radical new type of search (like pagerank back in the day) can hope to compete with the orgs in Google who support search.

Again, those orgs are likely too comfortable and less productive than people would like, but we're talking about many-many thousands and depending upon how you define "the work" of search upwards of 10k.

I didn't see any new secret sauce in the article and Google is has said that since 2015 (?) Google Brain has been involved in search.

This is not to say that Google couldn't be dislodged by search via LLM or similar, that is "new" research.

If you wrote that 100 people could outwork one person, I'd nod my head. If you wrote that 10k people could outwork 1k people, I'd shrug. If you tell me that 100 people can combine to tie my shoe faster than I can, I'd question that.

Building a state-of-the-art search engine is not shoelaces. But upwards of 10k workers is not impressive in the right direction.

One person starting out with anything at all can quickly grow into one person with one or two really innovative ideas. One or two good ideas can catch fire pretty quickly. Don't be too dismissive.