Not to take away from your main point, but Google did need to solve a fundamental computer science problem: how to compute eigenvector centrality efficiently.

Not to take away from your main point, but Google did need to solve a fundamental computer science problem: how to compute eigenvector centrality efficiently. It would have been impossible to calculate PageRank at web scale without the Power Method (and applying EC to the link structure of the web in the first place involves lots of nontrivial math).