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Comment by jpwagner | Hacker News Reader

This is not unbelievable. Google has more to lose.

Like the trust and business of their users, both domestic and international? They had to assume that people would find out eventually, so why capitulate?

It's like giving in to extortion, you're just delaying the long-term inevitable while damaging yourself in the short-run as well.

Personally speaking, my trust in Google hasn't changed. I don't trust sensitive data there because of other agencies, but if the world changes because of Snowden, I will happily continue to use (most of) Google's services.

yes, but they also have much more resources to fight and from what we know so far they didn't even try.

yea they do have more resources to fight, but from a profit perspective, its unlikely to net any gains, and the gains cannot be only for google (fighting for public good is never profitable). Therefore, its much better to just comply, and take the risk that the users might find out later. Who knows, users might not care, or might not be able to move off google at all...

No they don't. This man has given up his livelihood. Google could shut down their (free) e-mail service, probably without having to fire a single employee.

Yes the amount of intelligence they could gather on each of their users would undoubtedly suffer, and so their ad revenue might eventually lose a bit of growth, but life (and business) would go on for Google.

they don't have much to lose. If they're careful, they have backup servers in multiple places. If they can launder their money through offshore places, they can move their servers.

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