IBM. Wells Fargo. Frontier Airlines. T-Mobile. Experian. Daimler Chrysler.
These are some of the companies listed in the article. They are some of the biggest in the world. They don't seem to me to be the type of companies that take the latter approach to recruitment, possibly opening themselves up to discrimination legal issues.
I just find it incredibly sad that the people conducting these background checks at such large companies are so utterly incompetent.
Hiring somebody is risky and expensive. The cost for getting it wrong is quite high. At best, it costs the team money in lost productivity. At worst, the new hire actually is a criminal (or whatever).
Given two otherwise equal applicants, it's only prudent to hire the one that doesn't have nasty Google results.