I agree that the author doesn't provide a very specific critique of the actual logo. For me, it looks unbalanced. The spacing between letters (kerning) looks odd, and the 3-dimensionality fails on such a thin font. Those qualities make it look amateurish to me. I'm not a designer, so I guess I'm less sensitive to the debate about the process.
Maybe I'm just less perceptive of these types of things (I do tend to be more of an engineering type...), but as an average consumer, I don't think I'm more likely to visit Google or msn.com over Yahoo because I think Yahoo's kerning is off a bit. (Now that you mention it, it is a little funny, the Os are a bit too close and the Y and the H are a bit too far from the A. The slight perspective effect made by the bigger Y and last O and the smaller inner HO makes it a bit odd as well.)