The bottom line us that these 3 businesses make money. Billions per quarter. It's coming in so fast they quite literally dont know what to do with it all.
The market is fine with billions lost on the metaverse because its a drop in the bucket. An EU fine doesn't move the needle.
Yes, Google and Facebook are ad companies, and yes they'd like to be more diverse than that, but the fact remains that ads on Google and Facebook work. People keep spending money there because it works. There's real value in efficient advertising and Google and Facebook have provided that real value.
MS already has a diverse business, from OS to Office, from Azure to Xbox, from Teams to Flight Simulator. Bing can afford to be a long-play and seems to be gaining traction.
I also cannot help but think that if this article was written in 2006 Amazon would have been the (legitimate) poster child for the point he's making. Billions spent, never profitable. But look at them now.
Of course there are failures. Of course most of the money is wasted [1]. This is not a secret , its not even a bug, its baked into the VC model. It's been obvious since forever.
The VC model is but one kind of business model, designed for a specific kind of business. And as a model it is applied to a vanishingly small number of actual businesses overall.
[1] money is not "wasted" in the sense that water can be wasted by leaving a tap on. It is spent. Salaries, infrastructure, rent, cars, food, whatever - its all "trickling down" to people or actual profitable companies. Selling shovels, and jeans, is more profitable than digging for gold, and less risky, but that one gold digger who strikes it rich keeps hope up for all the others.