Staying on topic, another take on the google article:

Google reportedly blackmailed websites into giving it content for free

According to the report, for one example, Google took content from companies like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Amazon. In the latter case, Google lifted product rankings and placed them in their own search results for those products. When the companies complained to Google about the process, Google threatened to remove them entirely from results. The Journal quotes this section of the report: "It is clear that Google’s threat was intended to produce, and did produce, the desired effect, which was to coerce Yelp and TripAdvisor into backing down." The Commission ultimately had Google agree to let websites opt out of the process.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/19/8260073/google-ftc-leaked-anti-trust-report

With Apologies to Murphy.

If something can be abused, it will.

Google new motto should be in the lines of
"Do not GET CAUGHT while doing evil."

Lord Acton was right... "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Almost right.

Power corrupts, but blind obedience corrupts the most.

Stalin was just one man after all. Nothing without the useful idiots.  There is even a study on how 9 out of 10 people will obey an order to harm someone else if an authority figure tells them to do so. And the experiment was further corroborated by others, so pretty much is scientific proof that the majority of people act like sheep. And the sheep mentality is what enables the biggest evils in the world. Ranging to the "we where just following orders" crew. To the "I will not do shit and let evil thrive because Jesus will come for me" crew. And the all popular rational coward crew "I know that is wrong, but I will get affected if I do not obey".

I would say that less than 10% of the people goes into the. "I do not care if is convenient or not, or any threats you make, wrong is wrong and I will have no part of it." And less than 1% would say this is wrong, and I will fight you no mater the cost. Victory or Sovngarde (Those who played Skyrim know the reference).

The not so funny thing is that the majority of the sheep will help the tyrant send that 1% to Sovngarde. So the main threat is the sheep not the tyrant. The "let's help the tyrant extort more resources, spend 90% of them on himself so he will throw us a bone." crew.

In the case of Google, they are corrupt. But the problem is not their corruption, the power is the corruption of those who blindly follow Google. Without people taking the search engine seriously, they are nothing. Without the people accepting their policies they are nothing.

Another article on google leveraging search to self-promote:

• http://search.slashdot.org/story/15/06/29/1338245/new-study-accuses-google-of-anti-competitive-search-behavior
• http://www.slideshare.net/lutherlowe/wu-l