Where does this attitude stem from anyway?
I have a theory that popular opinions within social groups can reach a sort of tipping point.On one side of the tipping point, the company is seen as basically a bunch of good guys who may make occasional mistakes - but who doesn't? And they're always quick to correct them, or they're out of understandable commercial necessity. On the other side of the tipping point, the company is seen as basically a detrimental force, hungry to gather and abuse monopoly power, responsive and accountable to no-one, and motivated only by things that will let them take more money and power from the likes of us. Of course, for any company the size of Google / Microsoft / Apple / Facebook the answer is a little of column A, a little of column B. But how people will see a given action depends on what side of the tipping point a company is on. When a company does something like buying another company's patent portfolio (for "defensive purposes"), or buying a startup and making their paid offering free, it'll confirm your existing beliefs - whichever side you were on. If you went to Slashdot in the 90s, Microsoft could do no right - they could give free PCs to orphanages, and there'd be people saying they only did it to cement the dominance of Office. I'd say Google is just kinda hovering around that tipping point right now, in HN's median opinion. Some people think it's on one side, some on the other. Of course, us online-forum-readers and designers have to take some of the blame for this sort of reductionism - it's easy to comment without reading the article, or to design a system where parroting the collective opinion is rewarded with upvotes. |