Google figured out how to create a classless suite of internet services for anyone on Earth with an internet connection to use. I struggle to see how this didn't meet their original goals, what people celebrated about Google, and what made Google such an attractive place for people like the author to work.
What's fascinating is that Google gets virtually zero recognition for this (Google services are largely taken for granted), and beyond that, Google is one of the most hated corporations for it.
So if we use Google as a case study for "progressive business", having mostly succeeded at giving the poorest people one Earth an equal product to the richest people on Earth, what is the takeaway?
regularization 2 minutes ago [-]
> So if we use Google as a case study for "progressive business", having mostly succeeded at giving the poorest people one Earth an equal product to the richest people on Earth, what is the takeaway?
How should the people of Gaza thank Google for Google's Project Nimbus etc. targeting them for blockade starvation and bombings?
As Anatole France said - they have to work before the laws' majestic equality, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
godelski 2 hours ago [-]
> What's fascinating is that Google gets virtually zero recognition for this, and beyond that, Google is one of the most hated corporations for it.
The hate it's about what they did with the power they gained.
You can both love and hate something at the same time. Humans have complexity and nuance, don't dismiss that.
It's also worth noting that complaints are more vocal than complements. If things are working well then it's usually quiet. Nothing to say. But when shit goes wrong people talk because they want it fixed. Don't let this bias fool you into thinking that appreciation isn't happening. Appreciation is generally silent while hatred is vocal. That's not isolated to the internet either
panarky 41 minutes ago [-]
Let's say you could calculate a good-evil score for every large corporation by netting the good they do against the evil they do.
I don't know if Google would be net-good or net-evil, but I'm pretty sure they would be far less evil than most of the other large corporations on that list.
Certainly less evil than Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Meta, JPMorgan Chase, UnitedHealth, Coca-Cola, Oracle, Palantir, Goldman Sachs, LVMH, McDonalds, etc.
But it's a paradox that on HN, Google gets far more hate than any of these.
Maybe HN is a weird combination of fatalistic and idealistic, where we assume any for-profit corporation with a do-gooder mission is lying about its mission to hide its essential evilness, while secretly hoping that maybe it really is possible to do good and do well at the same time.
For a while it seemed like Google's do-gooder mission was genuine. Unlike their less principled competition, Google refused to take money to influence search rankings. Google withdrew from mainland China rather than continue censoring search results there.
We secretly started to believe. But all the other compromises along the way felt like betrayals.
Google really is less evil, even today, but we hate them more because we dared to believe, and Google let us down.
haunter 29 minutes ago [-]
> Certainly less evil than Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Meta, JPMorgan Chase, UnitedHealth, Coca-Cola, Oracle, Palantir, Goldman Sachs, LVMH, McDonalds, etc.
Certainly… according to who? I think some of these companies are, certainly, less evil than Google
entrepy123 12 minutes ago [-]
> McDonalds
McDonalds should start allowing full 50% off order discounts in exchange for customers opting-in to receiving custom-printed wrappers with hyperpeosnalized advertising printed on-demand just for them.
Could they afford to do it? IDK, advertising is effective and seems like a big business.
I think with their McDonalds App discounts for more normal pricing (last I checked), they're half way there?
allturtles 18 minutes ago [-]
> But it's a paradox that on HN, Google gets far more hate than any of these.
There is no paradox. This is Hacker News. It's a site of by and for people in the tech industry. Of course Google's activities (good and bad) get far more attention than those of Chase, or Coca-Cola.
I certainly wouldn't agree that Google "gets far more hate" on HN than Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, or Palantir.
echelon 22 minutes ago [-]
Google can do and has done a lot more harm than McDonalds or Coca-Cola.
They destroyed the open web (over and over - AMP, Manifest v2, etc. etc.), helped turned mobile computing into a rental / second-class citizen model, are ushering in identity tracking and attestation.
They pilfer the commons, unfairly monopolize, expand vertically and horizontally without bounds, make it impossible to compete, tax distribution every single way since they're the only set of rails, profit off of other people's copyrights and trademarks.
They even tried to hoard AI innovation, and it took employees leaving to set it free.
dismalaf 50 minutes ago [-]
> The hate it's about what they did with the power they gained.
Which is???
Serve ads without selling data?
I'm not sure if y'all are aware, but CC companies sell your data. Your telecom provider sells your data. Banks sell your data.
Google figured out a system to sell access while keeping your privacy. And somehow they're more hated than people who just straight up give your data away.
If most people hate Google all this proves is that most people are retarded.
godwinson__4-8 27 minutes ago [-]
I share your sentiments re google exactly. But the credit card and banks point is also understated.
Google innovates. CCs are basically a monopoly/duopoly, a private tax on an economy where increasingly everyone uses credit for everything. They make money on these transaction costs and banks issuing them make money charging insane interest when your neighbors fall behind, trapping them in a debt cycle. And yes, your purchases get aggregated into data sales.
Have credit cards innovated? Has your bank innovated? At least with Google their services are largely good and they actually innovate at shocking scale. Especially if you are paying for their products it is hard to argue Drive or YouTube haven't gotten better. You're complaining about ads but you want YouTube to be free? Who is going to pay for it?
Meanwhile has your credit card gotten better? Why is the CEO of MasterCard making millions of dollars? If you had to pick the thing in your pocket that is preying on you and you pick your phone, you're not thinking clearly. The answer is your credit card.
smalltorch 4 hours ago [-]
Well, they aren't hated for the tech they built, that is cool and easily appreciated.
People don't like google because they turned it into a way to sell people to others for a profit in essence. Over time more and more intrusive to the point where they are no longer worth any of the services they offer. Like a creepy stalker following you every where you go, at some point you need a restraining order.
Most people don't even realize the creepy stalker exists though.
losvedir 52 minutes ago [-]
> sell people to others for a profit in essence .... restraining order
If you have to make your point by exaggerated comparisons to slavery or analogies to safety concerns and scary crimes, then you should probably step back and re-evaluate.
Try to write true words in your comment and see where it leaves you. Google tracks you and sells ad-space to companies that are looking for profiles like your own.
jeffbee 3 hours ago [-]
> People don't like google
I only wanted to clarify that you must have implied that this statement applies among people who don't like Google, but whatever their reasons, those people are few. In aggregate, Google has a strong reputation and is one of the most well-liked businesses on Earth. It is on par with Cheerios. Disliking Google for "creepy stalker" reasons is not a mainstream thing.
pluralmonad 3 hours ago [-]
Your clarification aligns perfectly with the final statement in GPs comment. Most people do not realize the extent and invasiveness of googles voyeurism.
jeffbee 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
popalchemist 3 hours ago [-]
Ding ding ding. Google is only a few steps away from the "Orphan-Crushing Machine", or the pods that imprison/enslave people in The Matrix, because it is literally the hardware-software-businessmodel matrix which creates and maintains conditions of oppression through unprecedented surveillance and other late-stage capitalistic evils.
If the office software they created existed in a vacuum, it might be appreciated. But it is there as a honeypot to onboard people, particularly the most impoverished, into their dystopian hellscape. And I say that as a 20+ year user who, nevertheless, uses their stuff knowing all this, because it's often the best solution in a world of bad solutions.
arjie 4 hours ago [-]
In general, this is just the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics combined with armchair quarterbacking. Google’s services, like Amazon’s, create unbelievably large amounts of value for people of which these companies capture a tiny fraction.
However, these are fairly popular brands with positive associations for the majority of people. Online commentary is from a self-selected group and cynicism stands in as the poor man’s substitute for analysis.
pluralmonad 3 hours ago [-]
First time I've heard somebody call recognizing the evils of ad tech cynicism.
warshinder 6 minutes ago [-]
This is how I feel about excel whenever someone dismisses msft. The ultimate software for the anyman.
skybrian 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, both rich and poor people will use Google's free services. It's sort of like how a can of Coke is the same no matter who you are.
But also, Google sells plenty of "premium" products to people who are willing to pay, starting with YouTube premium. And I'm getting lots of upsells when using Google Meet these days.
hn_throwaway_99 2 hours ago [-]
> What's fascinating is that Google gets virtually zero recognition for this (Google services are largely taken for granted), and beyond that, Google is one of the most hated corporations for it.
I feel like this is some majorly false revisionist history. At least in my circles, Google was revered and lauded up until 2010-2012 or so, whenever enshittification started in earnest. And this isn't just some outsider opinion. Look at some of the original early Google communication where they highlighted how their ads were always separate and easily identifiable from organic results, and how that eroded over the years. Heck, there was a front page article today on NYTimes, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/technology/google-ai-open..., talking about how Google used to be an "open Internet champion" and is now an "AI gatekeeper". Google's corporate ethos from their early years is basically unrecognizable today, and that's why people hate them.
The hate towards Google only started picking up steam as they snowballed into deciding (like pretty much all corporate enterprises) that growth at all costs is the only purpose of corporations, and when they became the poster child (rightfully so IMO) for surveillance capitalism.
kccqzy 1 hours ago [-]
The New York Times is actually part of the reason why Google’s reputation went downhill. Somewhere around 2010–2015, the NYT and other traditional newspapers finally woke up and realized that their traditional job of disseminating information to the masses had been supplanted by a new generation of tech companies including Google and Meta. So the NYT and other newspapers soured their opinions around the time. If you read the NYT, just like many intellectuals do for priding themselves for reading a serious publication, your opinions of Google would have drastically changed around that timeframe too.
However among my circle of friends (who are in general not readers of the NYT), the main reason Google became hated was shutting down products (starting from Reader, culminating in Inbox) and launching duplicative products (how many chat apps did Google have). The hate had absolutely nothing to do with surveillance capitalism. If anything people hated Meta for that; Google’s role in surveillance capitalism was basically nil compared to Meta.
atomicfiredoll 13 minutes ago [-]
- Shutting down products.
- Shutting down accounts with almost no way to recover them and nobody to talk to.
- Going back on promises of unlimited storage when you buy their products, then constantly nagging you about storage space.
- The worsening quality of search results.
- Cramming incorrect AI answers into the top of their search results, or pushing it in other products.
- Using their control over Chrome to try and end ad blocking.
- The wholesale enshittification and lobotomization of YouTube.
- They have $1800 phones they're putting restrictions around being able to run your own code on.
- The fact that when you search an app in the Play store, the first result is an ad for some other app.
- Their UIs is just death by 10,000 papercuts in general.
- Their engagement in politics, not just lobbying but a donation of $1 million to the inauguration fund for a wildly unpopular president.
[Modern] Google is a big company, with a lot of users, and more than enough problems for those users to eventually stumble into at least one thing that leaves a bad taste in their mouth.
shevy-java 3 hours ago [-]
They de-facto created a monopoly. You can reason that its services
are useful, but without also pointing out that they established a
de-facto monopoly, this "analysis" is very incomplete.
> what people celebrated about Google
When exactly? Google initially was not anywhere near as problematic
as it is today. I don't see many celebrate Google these days.
> what made Google such an attractive place for people like the author to work.
Was it ever? It also feels it used to be more attractive in the past. Nowadays
you do not see any such yubilant posts about Google anymore. People complain a
lot more about Google.
> What's fascinating is that Google gets virtually zero recognition for this (Google services are largely taken for granted), and beyond that, Google is one of the most hated corporations for it.
That's also not true. Some of Google's service are still popular such as Google Maps. You see very little criticism about it. But in other parts, Google revealed how truly evil it is. Be it the fight against ublock origin or Google locking down Android or dominating the www via abusing adChromium. Nope, sorry, the criticism against Google is totally warranted. Years ago I did not understand the de-google movement. Now I am of the opposite opinion and even more extreme. I think Google has to be removed from this planet as entity. Someone needs to chop it up. The US courts are too corrupt and bribed to change anything. I think the people need to fix Google, by no longer using it. This is difficult, I get it; I am still using Google, such as youtube. That's actually my biggest use case of Google. The browser (thorium) is the second loophole here but in theory I could use firefox.
> So if we use Google as a case study for "progressive business", having mostly succeeded at giving the poorest people one Earth an equal product to the richest people on Earth, what is the takeaway?
That's like saying Al Capone is a saint. You try to connect evil with good. There is no connection here. Google remains an evil corporation even if it makes useful services. But it also kills existing services - look at the Google graveyard. Look how they crippled its search engine. Google pisses off people - why do you not see this? You basically wrote an eulogy for Google here. No specific criticism at all.
jjtheblunt 53 minutes ago [-]
what monopoly did they create? it seems they have competitors in everything they do.
jmyeet 2 hours ago [-]
> Google is one of the most hated corporations for it.
This is such a terminally online take. It's important to not look at the bubble you're in and get fooled into thinking it's a representative microcosm when it almost never is.
I'm reminded of when Quora was hyped up on HN and in Silicon Valley in general. VCs were waxing lyrical about how "everyone" they knew was using it but "everyone" here was "everyone they knew", which is a subset of "everyone in the VC/SV space".
Google is not hated by the general public. My basis for this is the 2025 Harris poll on company reputation [1].
Which product(s) are equal to the products richest people on earth use?
WarmWash 4 hours ago [-]
It should be read as the same product from google, not the same product across the market of products.
We can snag on technicalities like Pixel phones, yt premium, and gemini quotas, but by and large, a kid in the Indian slums is using the same Google suite as a house wife in the Hamptons.
mannanj 3 hours ago [-]
OK sure, Google deserves credit for that.
On the other hand, they also directly contribute to the technical addiction and attention economy that has created more depression and a lower quality of life for most people on earth. Maybe google taking responsibility for that can help improve their reputation.
is the correct answer what you are saying though, to pretend this other bad thing hasn't happened and only say google can do good?
gghackernewsgg 2 hours ago [-]
> that has created more depression and a lower quality of life for most people on earth.
Very strong claim. Any sources for the "most people on Earth" part?
izacus 4 hours ago [-]
Google Maps, YouTube, Google Search, Google Docs, GMail and even Google phones.
vineyardmike 4 hours ago [-]
Billionaires use Gmail alongside impoverished people across the world.
cyberax 28 minutes ago [-]
"Here at the phone company we serve everyone from presidents and kings to the scum of the earth"
Well, maybe because of the two ungrateful college students who dared to write in their essay the following notorious statement:
> We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.
I highly recommend you to blame these two guys for their lack of recognition of how great Google is, here is their name: Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page.
You do realize
> having mostly succeeded at giving the poorest people one Earth an equal product to the richest people on Earth
is equivalent in this scenario of saying:
> having mostly succeeded at exploiting the poorest people one Earth an equal amount to the richest people on Earth.
While the poorest people have less already, right?
scottyah 3 hours ago [-]
I can't help but see most of this as Claire using her gift of elegant prose and crafting narratives to retell a story of a prodigy that had a great product-market fit in the beginning then was unable to maintain relevancy while becoming bitter at the people around her. It must be so difficult to start out as a shining star then watch something you helped shape grow away from you. It looks like some powerful people at Google tried very hard to keep her with all these dramatic job changes. I always thought the walk-out seemed more dramatic and showy than people actually working for positive change (virtue signaling for their careers/to get their 5min), but I was very much on the outside. Seems hard all around.
i_cannot_hack 3 hours ago [-]
The main bitterness is pretty clearly directed at Google's handling of internal sexism and sexual misconduct, culminating at what seems to be pretty direct (but underhanded) retaliation at the organizers of the walkout during a time when they gathered sustained internal and external publicity, leading to her immediate departure. Are you claiming the real spark of that conflict was her "being bitter at the people around her due to being unable to maintain relevancy" and not any real convictions she held regarding the known misconduct at the company? Seems like a dubious accusation to me in that case.
alextp 6 hours ago [-]
When claire stopped writing the tgif emails I was very sad, among others I talked to. When I heard, years later, about all this bs she went through, it helped crack the illusion for me. So sad.
advisedwang 5 hours ago [-]
This story naturally ends after Claire's departure, but "that the era of sanctioned dissent was over" did not mean that dissent was over. The lesson for many was that "asking nicely" wasn't working. I believe that realization that real power was needed to in order to make change was a big part of why the Alphabet Workers Union was able to get off the ground. Of course it hasn't gotten the numbers to actually build much power, sadly.
jackb4040 2 hours ago [-]
Hasn't yet. No need to be defeatist about organizing. All of the other things tech workers have to be defeatist about (pointless hype cycles, layoffs, etc.) show no signs of stopping and will effectuate more organizing over time.
Fun easter egg: the barcode on the cover (the one on the left at least) is for the book's ISBN.
pkasting 5 hours ago [-]
I was there 06-25, and this matches my recollection. Honestly, it's a very restrained document.
PessimalDecimal 6 hours ago [-]
I actually enjoyed the first hand experience of an early-ish Google described at the beginning. For those with enough tenure in tech, was this ethos unique (at the time)? Or was it typical of successful, tech-heavy startups? I could believe an early Sun might've felt similar but I don't know.
glimshe 5 hours ago [-]
Most of the top names had unique, great cultures at some point. Early Microsoft was awesome, as well, I hear, early Apple.
PessimalDecimal 5 hours ago [-]
Ah good point. The Intel Museum in Santa Clara shows signs of that too. Custom labels on bottles of wine to celebrate hittings revenue milestones e.g.
sssilver 5 hours ago [-]
I don't know where else to express gratitude for the delightful read that this was.
I wish to hope that more and more people are seeing the hollowness of all that these corporations posture and profess.
guelo 26 minutes ago [-]
James Damore won, we're living in his world. Or the Gamergate world. It makes me wonder why though, it's not as if half the country and many of the engineers don't still have the same progressive values. Honestly I think it's just the power of the rich men with all the money. SWE's labor power has been slipping through our fingers ever since Elon's "let that sink in" and will only continue to accelerate.
brcmthrowaway 20 minutes ago [-]
Google, Apple, Amazon, MS etc don't seem to be the default place for top EECS grads anymore. Maybe middling candidates and H1b prisoners but 4.0 GPA grads with personal projects end up at NVIDIA, OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. And Meta, because they still pay insane.
nphardon 15 minutes ago [-]
I think a lot are also opting for startups. I think the number of million dollar value start ups is up quite a bit right now.
That h1b prisoner comment is starrrrrk (and true to my experience as well).
totallygeeky 3 hours ago [-]
I'm struck at how brutal it is to be a woman in even pseudo-progressive tech spaces at times. How talking the talk does nothing if HR and leadership quickly and quietly work to undermine at all and make life hell. The HR line of "we investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing" always feels surreal.
easton 6 hours ago [-]
> One recounted a tragicomic anecdote from a T.G.I.F. meeting on International Women’s Day, when a Googler had asked Larry and Sergey to name some of their personal female heroes.
..and they couldn’t just say “Grace Hopper”? These people have used computers before, right?
ChadNauseam 54 minutes ago [-]
Grace Hopper is the goat but I'm not sure she would have immediately come to mind for me. Actually, if someone asked me to name any hero of mine, irrespective of sex, I don't know if I could quickly name someone. Is it really a huge indictment?
jackb4040 1 hours ago [-]
Go find the drunkest pledge in a Stanford frat house, give him media training a stylist and a personal trainer, and ten years to craft a corporate ideolect through twitter threads and founders' retreats. That's how you get the archetypal tech CEO.
As a class they are overwhelmingly incurious people, and would barely notice if you swapped their industry out for Big Tobacco or bombs. They care exactly as much about tech as Jeffrey Epstein did about finance.
> “We need moon shots,” Larry would say, big, world-changing ideas and initiatives, to make employees excited about innovating again. (Curing cancer wasn’t necessarily a moon shot, he once suggested, since it would only extend the average human life span by about three years.)
And yet I'd much prefer to have one kid with cancer be saved and allowed to live an average lifespan than to have thousands of old rich people extend their extractive existences for decades.
heft 3 hours ago [-]
Ah. The voice of money. Wake me up when they return it all. We upgraded from blog posts to New Yorker, but it’s the same drivel.
surgical_fire 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
inquirerGeneral 6 hours ago [-]
[dead]
shevy-java 3 hours ago [-]
The Voice of Google - should be silenced. I don't want to hear any more Google propaganda in general. From "acceptable ads" to trying to kill ublock origin - enough is enough.
aqfamnzc 34 minutes ago [-]
Lol, read the article buddy
invictati 4 hours ago [-]
TGIF at my non-Google startup, founded by xooglers, reeked of the same brototypical sweaty odor alluded to in this story.
Rendered at 21:41:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
What's fascinating is that Google gets virtually zero recognition for this (Google services are largely taken for granted), and beyond that, Google is one of the most hated corporations for it.
So if we use Google as a case study for "progressive business", having mostly succeeded at giving the poorest people one Earth an equal product to the richest people on Earth, what is the takeaway?
How should the people of Gaza thank Google for Google's Project Nimbus etc. targeting them for blockade starvation and bombings?
As Anatole France said - they have to work before the laws' majestic equality, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
You can both love and hate something at the same time. Humans have complexity and nuance, don't dismiss that.
It's also worth noting that complaints are more vocal than complements. If things are working well then it's usually quiet. Nothing to say. But when shit goes wrong people talk because they want it fixed. Don't let this bias fool you into thinking that appreciation isn't happening. Appreciation is generally silent while hatred is vocal. That's not isolated to the internet either
I don't know if Google would be net-good or net-evil, but I'm pretty sure they would be far less evil than most of the other large corporations on that list.
Certainly less evil than Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Meta, JPMorgan Chase, UnitedHealth, Coca-Cola, Oracle, Palantir, Goldman Sachs, LVMH, McDonalds, etc.
But it's a paradox that on HN, Google gets far more hate than any of these.
Maybe HN is a weird combination of fatalistic and idealistic, where we assume any for-profit corporation with a do-gooder mission is lying about its mission to hide its essential evilness, while secretly hoping that maybe it really is possible to do good and do well at the same time.
For a while it seemed like Google's do-gooder mission was genuine. Unlike their less principled competition, Google refused to take money to influence search rankings. Google withdrew from mainland China rather than continue censoring search results there.
We secretly started to believe. But all the other compromises along the way felt like betrayals.
Google really is less evil, even today, but we hate them more because we dared to believe, and Google let us down.
Certainly… according to who? I think some of these companies are, certainly, less evil than Google
McDonalds should start allowing full 50% off order discounts in exchange for customers opting-in to receiving custom-printed wrappers with hyperpeosnalized advertising printed on-demand just for them.
Could they afford to do it? IDK, advertising is effective and seems like a big business.
I think with their McDonalds App discounts for more normal pricing (last I checked), they're half way there?
There is no paradox. This is Hacker News. It's a site of by and for people in the tech industry. Of course Google's activities (good and bad) get far more attention than those of Chase, or Coca-Cola.
I certainly wouldn't agree that Google "gets far more hate" on HN than Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, or Palantir.
They destroyed the open web (over and over - AMP, Manifest v2, etc. etc.), helped turned mobile computing into a rental / second-class citizen model, are ushering in identity tracking and attestation.
They pilfer the commons, unfairly monopolize, expand vertically and horizontally without bounds, make it impossible to compete, tax distribution every single way since they're the only set of rails, profit off of other people's copyrights and trademarks.
They even tried to hoard AI innovation, and it took employees leaving to set it free.
Which is???
Serve ads without selling data?
I'm not sure if y'all are aware, but CC companies sell your data. Your telecom provider sells your data. Banks sell your data.
Google figured out a system to sell access while keeping your privacy. And somehow they're more hated than people who just straight up give your data away.
If most people hate Google all this proves is that most people are retarded.
Google innovates. CCs are basically a monopoly/duopoly, a private tax on an economy where increasingly everyone uses credit for everything. They make money on these transaction costs and banks issuing them make money charging insane interest when your neighbors fall behind, trapping them in a debt cycle. And yes, your purchases get aggregated into data sales.
Have credit cards innovated? Has your bank innovated? At least with Google their services are largely good and they actually innovate at shocking scale. Especially if you are paying for their products it is hard to argue Drive or YouTube haven't gotten better. You're complaining about ads but you want YouTube to be free? Who is going to pay for it?
Meanwhile has your credit card gotten better? Why is the CEO of MasterCard making millions of dollars? If you had to pick the thing in your pocket that is preying on you and you pick your phone, you're not thinking clearly. The answer is your credit card.
People don't like google because they turned it into a way to sell people to others for a profit in essence. Over time more and more intrusive to the point where they are no longer worth any of the services they offer. Like a creepy stalker following you every where you go, at some point you need a restraining order.
Most people don't even realize the creepy stalker exists though.
If you have to make your point by exaggerated comparisons to slavery or analogies to safety concerns and scary crimes, then you should probably step back and re-evaluate.
Try to write true words in your comment and see where it leaves you. Google tracks you and sells ad-space to companies that are looking for profiles like your own.
I only wanted to clarify that you must have implied that this statement applies among people who don't like Google, but whatever their reasons, those people are few. In aggregate, Google has a strong reputation and is one of the most well-liked businesses on Earth. It is on par with Cheerios. Disliking Google for "creepy stalker" reasons is not a mainstream thing.
If the office software they created existed in a vacuum, it might be appreciated. But it is there as a honeypot to onboard people, particularly the most impoverished, into their dystopian hellscape. And I say that as a 20+ year user who, nevertheless, uses their stuff knowing all this, because it's often the best solution in a world of bad solutions.
However, these are fairly popular brands with positive associations for the majority of people. Online commentary is from a self-selected group and cynicism stands in as the poor man’s substitute for analysis.
But also, Google sells plenty of "premium" products to people who are willing to pay, starting with YouTube premium. And I'm getting lots of upsells when using Google Meet these days.
I feel like this is some majorly false revisionist history. At least in my circles, Google was revered and lauded up until 2010-2012 or so, whenever enshittification started in earnest. And this isn't just some outsider opinion. Look at some of the original early Google communication where they highlighted how their ads were always separate and easily identifiable from organic results, and how that eroded over the years. Heck, there was a front page article today on NYTimes, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/technology/google-ai-open..., talking about how Google used to be an "open Internet champion" and is now an "AI gatekeeper". Google's corporate ethos from their early years is basically unrecognizable today, and that's why people hate them.
The hate towards Google only started picking up steam as they snowballed into deciding (like pretty much all corporate enterprises) that growth at all costs is the only purpose of corporations, and when they became the poster child (rightfully so IMO) for surveillance capitalism.
However among my circle of friends (who are in general not readers of the NYT), the main reason Google became hated was shutting down products (starting from Reader, culminating in Inbox) and launching duplicative products (how many chat apps did Google have). The hate had absolutely nothing to do with surveillance capitalism. If anything people hated Meta for that; Google’s role in surveillance capitalism was basically nil compared to Meta.
- Shutting down accounts with almost no way to recover them and nobody to talk to.
- Going back on promises of unlimited storage when you buy their products, then constantly nagging you about storage space.
- The worsening quality of search results.
- Cramming incorrect AI answers into the top of their search results, or pushing it in other products.
- Using their control over Chrome to try and end ad blocking.
- The wholesale enshittification and lobotomization of YouTube.
- They have $1800 phones they're putting restrictions around being able to run your own code on.
- The fact that when you search an app in the Play store, the first result is an ad for some other app.
- Their UIs is just death by 10,000 papercuts in general.
- Their engagement in politics, not just lobbying but a donation of $1 million to the inauguration fund for a wildly unpopular president.
[Modern] Google is a big company, with a lot of users, and more than enough problems for those users to eventually stumble into at least one thing that leaves a bad taste in their mouth.
> what people celebrated about Google
When exactly? Google initially was not anywhere near as problematic as it is today. I don't see many celebrate Google these days.
> what made Google such an attractive place for people like the author to work.
Was it ever? It also feels it used to be more attractive in the past. Nowadays you do not see any such yubilant posts about Google anymore. People complain a lot more about Google.
> What's fascinating is that Google gets virtually zero recognition for this (Google services are largely taken for granted), and beyond that, Google is one of the most hated corporations for it.
That's also not true. Some of Google's service are still popular such as Google Maps. You see very little criticism about it. But in other parts, Google revealed how truly evil it is. Be it the fight against ublock origin or Google locking down Android or dominating the www via abusing adChromium. Nope, sorry, the criticism against Google is totally warranted. Years ago I did not understand the de-google movement. Now I am of the opposite opinion and even more extreme. I think Google has to be removed from this planet as entity. Someone needs to chop it up. The US courts are too corrupt and bribed to change anything. I think the people need to fix Google, by no longer using it. This is difficult, I get it; I am still using Google, such as youtube. That's actually my biggest use case of Google. The browser (thorium) is the second loophole here but in theory I could use firefox.
> So if we use Google as a case study for "progressive business", having mostly succeeded at giving the poorest people one Earth an equal product to the richest people on Earth, what is the takeaway?
That's like saying Al Capone is a saint. You try to connect evil with good. There is no connection here. Google remains an evil corporation even if it makes useful services. But it also kills existing services - look at the Google graveyard. Look how they crippled its search engine. Google pisses off people - why do you not see this? You basically wrote an eulogy for Google here. No specific criticism at all.
This is such a terminally online take. It's important to not look at the bubble you're in and get fooled into thinking it's a representative microcosm when it almost never is.
I'm reminded of when Quora was hyped up on HN and in Silicon Valley in general. VCs were waxing lyrical about how "everyone" they knew was using it but "everyone" here was "everyone they knew", which is a subset of "everyone in the VC/SV space".
Google is not hated by the general public. My basis for this is the 2025 Harris poll on company reputation [1].
[1]: https://www.axios.com/2025/05/20/axios-harris-poll-company-r...
We can snag on technicalities like Pixel phones, yt premium, and gemini quotas, but by and large, a kid in the Indian slums is using the same Google suite as a house wife in the Hamptons.
On the other hand, they also directly contribute to the technical addiction and attention economy that has created more depression and a lower quality of life for most people on earth. Maybe google taking responsibility for that can help improve their reputation.
is the correct answer what you are saying though, to pretend this other bad thing hasn't happened and only say google can do good?
Very strong claim. Any sources for the "most people on Earth" part?
https://vimeo.com/355556831
jeevacation@gmail.com
> We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.
I highly recommend you to blame these two guys for their lack of recognition of how great Google is, here is their name: Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page.
You do realize
> having mostly succeeded at giving the poorest people one Earth an equal product to the richest people on Earth
is equivalent in this scenario of saying:
> having mostly succeeded at exploiting the poorest people one Earth an equal amount to the richest people on Earth.
While the poorest people have less already, right?
I wish to hope that more and more people are seeing the hollowness of all that these corporations posture and profess.
That h1b prisoner comment is starrrrrk (and true to my experience as well).
..and they couldn’t just say “Grace Hopper”? These people have used computers before, right?
As a class they are overwhelmingly incurious people, and would barely notice if you swapped their industry out for Big Tobacco or bombs. They care exactly as much about tech as Jeffrey Epstein did about finance.
And yet I'd much prefer to have one kid with cancer be saved and allowed to live an average lifespan than to have thousands of old rich people extend their extractive existences for decades.