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BetaNews on Google: Simply brilliant business, but is it evil?

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JavaJones:
I'd wager Google is at least better in the "driving force of greed" department than other companies, but they are of course still a *corporation*, and a public one at that, so their motivation is ultimately profit. But take for example their professed practice of *not* hiring all the brains in the market to "leave some intelligence keeping the market vibrant" or some such. Could be PR bullcrap, but given how Google does seem to walk the walk in other areas like Open Source I'm not inclined to jump to the BS conclusion. It's just one example anyway - the open source contributions are another. Sure, many benefit Google directly, but many others are so indirectly beneficial as to be arguably more about geek philosophy and cred than profit. Honestly I think Google is one of the only somewhat "geeky" companies of its size - neither MS, nor Apple, nor any other major company I can think of seems to embody geek ideals as much (though *again* they are of course a publicly traded company so they work within limits). Honestly I'd have been happy to never see Google go public - I'd be willing to bed they'd be closer to their "do no evil" ideal in that case.

- Oshyan

steeladept:
There is email though, I grant that one.
-zridling (December 24, 2009, 01:25 AM)
--- End quote ---

Huh?  :huh:  Email?  Have you ever heard of a tiny little email offering called Yahoo!?  What about Hotmail?  Neither are Google emails.  And that doesn't even begin to include the email that almost every ISP offers with their connection.  None of those are Google and, in fact, few are even outsourced to webmail servers.  Most, now days, even offer webmail interfaces so they are just as portable.  No, I think the closest they are to a Monopoly is in Search as they are bigger than Yahoo and Microsoft combined, even with Bing (though it doesn't seem to be staying there for long as Bing is indeed rather impressive as you stated).

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