Yes, Google's "don't be evil" mantra is tempting low hanging fruit. They dropped the ball here, but so did most of the valley. Nobody should be getting free passes in the court of public opinion.
The fact of the matter is these are companies that are self interested, it just so happens that a lot of their technologies agree with what many people believe. Decentralization of power, power to the people, internet, technology, rebellion against old ways, etc. etc. But we can never forget that these companies are exactly what was in the past, just in a new era with new toys.
If we're to make progress it's important to try, and do things differently.
Why is that? All evidence points to the contrary. Take for instance, the collapse of the housing market a few years ago. Not only were the borrowers not jailed, most people even blame the bankers.
The bankers deserve blame and jail time for endangering the entire economy with their short-sighted greed.
For some perspective: In the UK, if a bank extends credit to people who were obviously not credit-worthy at the time of applying, based on the information available to the bank, not only is the debtor not at fault, but the debts can in many cases be wiped out by the courts. And it happens regularly - people have had entire mortgaged just struck off because the banks were found to have acted irresponsibly when giving them out.
The banks here have a legal responsibility to understand their customers ability to repay, and to not extend credit that is likely to cause their customers substantial financial hardship.
The reasoning for this is that there's a massive information symmetry - most people do not understand the full risks, and are easily seduced by the thought of a new house and possibly smooth talking real estate agents to look at think in the most rosy way possible, while the banks know very well the hard data on what financials are likely to cause defaults when you take into account risk of unemployment, budgets, unexpected repairs, likely interest rate movements etc..
Yes, that's because debtors' prison is considered immoral. Failing to pay back a contracted loan is not stealing, since the loan was given with the lender's consent and, had they done their homework and acted honestly, their exactly quantified knowledge of the risk of nonpayment they were taking on themselves.