I looked for "81" in the page and found nothing. Apparently, he never said that 81.5% of the area is made up of ads. He may have edited it but I think his criticism was towards the unused space for results, not especially towards the ads.
And if that is the case, I must concur. I fail to understand why Google added a large side bar instead of adding more top bars in the unused space next to the logo (perhaps right under the search text box). The designers at Google may disagree but the Jitbit guy sure has a point.