You may be assuming you know my viewpoint without me having presented it in full, but anyway I wasn't looking to argue in bad faith, I guess I just see a strong difference between "successful company that has made money and cool products" and "added incalculable value to the world." That's a very strong statement!

The parent comment was looking to weigh the problems of the ad-supported economy and the ills brought about by that described in the article against the value Google has brought to the world, and I just don't see how the two stack up, so I wanted to understand their weighting of the latter.

Everyone seems keen to write haigiographies of companies that in all honesty I mostly find ... okay I guess? Could do better but they make cool stuff? I don't "hate" Google, but I do think that a company the size of Google doesn't need such zealous defenders, it needs a critical society that pushes it to do better with the crazy resources it has, and one of those things is to examine the ways in which it's basic revenue model is harmful.