> 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.