Google is penalizing sites that violate their standards of top-heaviness. I don't think it's fair to call them hypocrites because they don't meet your standards.
The article shows the "credit cards" results page with (at his resolution) 4 top ads, 4 full and 1 partial side ad, and 1 partial result shown. If 9 ads to 1 line of content isn't top-heavy with ads according to google's standards, then their standards are worthless.
If that results page were even close to the average case for Google, I'll agree with you. But it's not, so it doesn't really prove much of anything. Google isn't going to penalize your whole site just because one page out of a million is a little over the line.
