Can you say more about this? Do you think those tender feelings towards Google track some strain of values which Google still carries? Or does this statement reflect some fear of retaliation or conflict that would drown out the rest of your message?
Genuinely interested in how you think about this, especially in the context of this new book’s topic. Thank you for this AMA.
I suspect that it's largely just that brand reputation tends to be very sticky in the minds of people.
It's the same reason that Pyrex, Harley-Davidson, and Dyson are still high reputation brands even though the product they make today is tragically worse than what gave them their initial reputation.
(I tend to think of private equity as often existing as an arbitrage system to take advantage of the fact that they can buy a loved brand, slash the quality and increase the profit, and continue to sell at its original price based on that brand stickiness for a while until people eventually wise up.)