If Google has widespread rings of employees dedicated to flagging anti-Google stories on Hacker News, do you honestly think that not one single person would have exposed it by now? That all people involved- including ex employees, most likely- would never talk?
Even the other story about Microsoft's response is getting flagged and is far down the front page for its points.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5715889
What's your explanation for this constant flagging of Microsoft related stories or anti-Google ones?
Read through this thread for examples for many more stories getting flagged off the front page.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5716010
HN rankings graph showing abnormal and sudden dips.
http://hnrankings.info/5715168/
HN rankings graph showing low rank for a long time inspite of a lot of upvotes.
Occam's razor, you know. Not everything is a conspiracy.
As a Google employee: yes. We don't like this any more than anyone else does. We want to _earn_ positive feedback. The idea of Google employees flagging (or being told to flag!) stories about Google they don't like is laughable to me.