I totally disagree with the point of this article. It's (fairly) easy to add features until you're UI is cluttered. The hard part is making the decision between what features need to be added and which detract from your final presentation. In most cases, I've found that the right balance finds itself closer to minimalism than not.
The "why and not the what" is an important consideration, especially for incorporating design elements from Google. If your site's primary benefit is the ability to quickly access information - a simple search box makes more sense than attempting to organize categories in another fashion (you spoke of the conditioning in search). When Twitter switched their homepage to something reminiscent of Google, I understood, I accepted and periodically use.
I don't see what's wrong with showing off your product on your homepage. Even if you have a service, have a sexy screenshot and say why it will benefit the viewer ("It will increase your conversion rate by 5%" or "Improve your customer service by being responsive").<p>It probably isn't as sexy as an Apple computer, but that doesn't mean you should feel the need to hide it.
The battle is often over familiar vs. intuitive designs. Creating a new design paradigm that is intuitive is much more difficult that presenting a user with a design they are familiar with. Most web design seems to follow the path of least resistance. It also suffers from the question of is this graphic design, or is it interface? Real life metrics have stole the thunder of 'pretty' designs.