Replying here because you said most of the things I was going to say. This article just makes me sad -- Keccak was chosen for SHA-3 specifically because it turned out SHA-2 wasn't as broken as we feared, and although slow Keccak brings to the table cryptographic diversity and the slew of cool things that can be done with a sponge construction that are now possible using standard cryptographic primitives. NIST made clear that by the time of finalist selection, the point of SHA-3 was NOT to replace SHA-2. OP should know better.