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Comment by c0l0 | Hacker News Reader

In 2012, I interviewed at Google Ireland for an SRE position. I ended up not taking the job due to family issues, but I somewhat regretted having missed the opportunity to tackle Google-sized problems and make FAANG-sized money for a few years after.

This feeling has ceased entirely in the meantime, due to what Google has become, and how its understanding of its role in the world seems to have shifted. Or maybe its true corporate nature has only become more apparent? I am not sure - but I was a firm believer that Google was a force of good in the corporate landscape of the 00s, and I am fully convinced it is not any more. It actually makes me sad, and I am afraid of the damage it will end up doing to the places (the 'net) and communities (most of the FOSS world) I love.

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It's also been a massive boost to FOSS as well. I don't think Google is a single entity with a true nature. It's just people deciding things. Sometimes we get VP8 open sourced, a world-level value adding move. Sometimes we get them running an experiment whose intentions should've been better articulated.

Some gifts along the way like AMP aka "Better internet"

Certainly, there are many incredibly talented and passionate programmers there. These people want to make interesting things and many of them want to share them with the world. The company has gotten to where it is by being an exciting place to work for these people and supporting their endeavours.

But let's not fool ourselves, Google at the end of the day is still an ad company. So while we can appreciate what they've contributed using this approach, we can never ignore the fact that ultimately business priorities will always trump everything else, which means they can use their creations against us on the turn of a dime.

They used to be innovative and forward looking and send to be having fun at contributing new tech. Under Pichai they seem to only want to lock in their position, kill all competitors, convert the WWW to GWWW

I think Google did used to be a force for good. I even got happy when they bought the notorious DoubleClick, because I was confident that they would be able to change the scumbag online ad industry for the better.

That didn't happen, though. What happened instead is that Google became a scumbag online ad company.

Money is a hell of a drug.

Early Google seemed to be genuine and upstanding fellas. The dotcom crash made everyone scramble to pay the bills and monetize which is where the seeds were sown for what we have today.

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