This is the sort of stuff I would be excepeting out of YCombinator startups. Instead we got mostly lame web 2.0 websites with no clear business model. Okay, that was a bit harsh, but still - I think most of the YCombinator applicants don't have enough ambition and the ideas are too focused on the web 2.0 world.
Why would you consider this suspicious of being made up? I think his path to success is far more realistic than almost all of the web 2.0 stuff out there.
Because it is either the startup scene is in such a bad state that Pownce (which is one of the worst me-too startups I've seen) is among the exciting startups to watch or the writer of the article has little knowledge of startups and innovating technology in general.
I prefer to believe the latter, I believe there are quite a few exciting and innovating startups to watch out there.
This is not just for bloggers: it is (or better will be) also for anyone publishing content on the web. Newspapers are moving (or better, moved) to the internet. This can bring a lot of value(reduce costs) to big companies so it is a valuable startup.
In my opinion a lot better than any of the YCombinator startups yet. It has a cool (non-trivial) technology underneath and it actually brings value.
edit: About it being the next Google - granted it is far from being the next Google, but I can see it being very sucessful.
I can really see this startup succeeding: unlike most web 2.0 companies, they actually have the technology (if it works as they say -- I believe they are using some quite sophisticated NLP/AI stuff on the backend) that provides added value to the users.
Currently it only support a few blogging platforms, but I believe Joomla and other CMS support is also coming, as well as an API.
I am not sure. I got the impression they'll be pursuing those ideas (as in the case of the cancer-filter product), not just charging companies to use their patents.
The article was pretty inspiring, knowing not everyone is just interested in making yet another social website or a twitter clone, but something that can really substantially change people's lives.