It was, which is why it makes such a perfect analogy.

Surveillance has lots of good and bad uses, and is morally neutral itself. Powerful but neutral. The problem comes when the users use it for bad purposes, and in fact it is so tempting that they can't help using it for more and more bad purposes. If every palantir (either one) user was a "good guy" who refused to use it for bad purposes, it would be a potent force for good, and that's why they were created in the first place.

> he could corrupt the other users through the orb, but the orb itself was not corrupting?

Interestingly enough, the stones could not lie. They only showed real things. Sauron's corruption was achieved through a lack of context. Just like Palantir (the company) can do with data. A dataset can be completely truthful, but lead to a false or manipulative conclusion.

But to the original point, yeah, the name Palantir is spot on for what the company intends to do, anyone who even has remote knowledge of Middle Earth wouldn't dare touch that company with a 10 foot pole.

Sauron is the reason the palantiri are dangerous, yes, because his influence causes them to mislead and delude the viewer. That happens even when Sauron is not directly influencing the visions. Essentially, when the forces of evil are present, the seeing stones may show the truth but in such a profoundly misleading way that even those with the best intentions will misinterpret their visions and fall prey to misunderstanding. This even happens to Sauron himself.

It's worth noting that by the War of the Ring (the Lord of the Rings story) Sauron had possessed a palantir for around 1000 years. Anyone who knew what a palantir was should have known that they were not to be trusted.

As for how that relates to Palantir the real-life corporation, I'll leave that up to your interpretation.

Nope. Sauron could just radicalize by making the palantir show what he wanted them to see, but it was always true.

That was also my interpretation from reading LotR as well.