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Comment by ecmascript | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why people gets surprised over and over again when a megacorp does it's megacorp thing. Corporations are not people, they will do whatever it takes to play in their best interest. Especially large corporations.

They can sell you the dream of x but if they feel like it, they will kill that dream faster than you will be able to wake up.

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The surprising part I guess is that originally it seemed like the foundation for them was to market goodwill. Now it seems like that wasn't the goal after all, but to more be able to control/takeover these projects. I guess now that I write that, yea, I shouldn't be surprised.

There’s frequently a difference between outrage and surprise.

I still don't see why there's outrage. It's a silly think to be outraged over something predictable. This sort of thing is. It's like being outraged over a mosquito biting you.

There is at least some non-zero chance that widespread expressions of outrage can encourage even megacorps to change direction - the same cannot be said of mosquitoes. The latter are expressing their immutable core nature, whereas the core nature of the former is the aggregate effect of the behaviour of a collection of human beings and therefore subject to change.

Megacorps change their nature about as well as mosquitoes do. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Now what corporations do do (sometimes quite well) is make superficial changes to avoid bad PR. But if you really want them to change their nature you must use a very blunt instrument -- government regulation.

Yes, and how will government regulation appear? Just randomly, for no reason?

Outrage leads to action and keeps some bad behavior in line.

We are creatures of emotion stirred action by said emotions.

> It's like being outraged over a mosquito biting you.

... I can't be the only one, can I?

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