alt Hacker News > What's fascinating is that Google gets virtually zero recognition for this, and beyond that, Google is one of the most hated corporations for it.
You can both love and hate something at the same time. Humans have complexity and nuance, don't dismiss that.
It's also worth noting that complaints are more vocal than complements. If things are working well then it's usually quiet. Nothing to say. But when shit goes wrong people talk because they want it fixed. Don't let this bias fool you into thinking that appreciation isn't happening. Appreciation is generally silent while hatred is vocal. That's not isolated to the internet either
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Let's say you could calculate a good-evil score for every large corporation by netting the good they do against the evil they do.
I don't know if Google would be net-good or net-evil, but I'm pretty sure they would be far less evil than most of the other large corporations on that list.
Certainly less evil than Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Meta, JPMorgan Chase, UnitedHealth, Coca-Cola, Oracle, Palantir, Goldman Sachs, LVMH, McDonalds, etc.
But it's a paradox that on HN, Google gets far more hate than any of these.
Maybe HN is a weird combination of fatalistic and idealistic, where we assume any for-profit corporation with a do-gooder mission is lying about its mission to hide its essential evilness, while secretly hoping that maybe it really is possible to do good and do well at the same time.
For a while it seemed like Google's do-gooder mission was genuine. Unlike their less principled competition, Google refused to take money to influence search rankings. Google withdrew from mainland China rather than continue censoring search results there.
We secretly started to believe. But all the other compromises along the way felt like betrayals.
Google really is less evil, even today, but we hate them more because we dared to believe, and Google let us down.
> The hate it's about what they did with the power they gained.
Which is???
Serve ads without selling data?
I'm not sure if y'all are aware, but CC companies sell your data. Your telecom provider sells your data. Banks sell your data.
Google figured out a system to sell access while keeping your privacy. And somehow they're more hated than people who just straight up give your data away.
If most people hate Google all this proves is that most people are retarded.
It's less a statement about the absolute hatred that Google gets, and more about Google using collected data to target you with ads is the most hated thing about Google (directly or indirectly).
Google pretty much figure out how to take an attribute that every human has (desire) and turn that into indefinite sustainable (and growing!) services for every living human no money required. Role the clock back 25 years and this idea is so powerful and utopian, no wonder Googlers were riding on top of the world. Anyone on Earth of any background and any wealth level will be able to have web search, e-mail, an office suite, maps, youtube, a blog, data storage, all the tools you need for productive online life, for free, for everyone. I cannot think of any business idea more progressive than that.
However, the point is that the above is inseparable from Google's data collection. There is no other solution to achieving the above. None. It's either data collection or pay walls. Walls that naturally run along the huge wealth divides globally, and leave behind those who need it most.
So I suppose at heart the question is: If free services for all humans and mass scale data collection are two sides of the same coin, is this something that we want or something we need to avoid?
(I know people are itching to call false-dichotomy, but lets be real, nothing in 25 years that isn't money-based or ad-based has gained meaningful VC money i.e. VCs dont buy into "donation based" models)