[f055]

Which is funny, because actually, their business model was never "really cool", just "evil" ;)

[sambeau]

Google were not "evil" for a long time after this. They really were a force for good in the world for a long time. I have never admired a large company so much as I did the Google of the early 2000s. Youthful, gifted, moral, crazily ambitious, constantly doing things I thought impossible…

The "evil" only really crept in once they started to take over all of the world's advertising.

[golergka]

What exactly is evil about their deal with advertisement?

[f055]

If you think that's when "evil" crept in, you really should think again how "evil" works - or, how would you implement and scale such a business model. Hint: long before they even started taking over the world of ads. The goals were defined at the beginning.

[woranl]

Google were not as "evil" when Larry Page and Sergey Brin were in charge. Nowadays, the moral standard is very low.

[charmides]

They're still in charge.

[woranl]

Sundar Pichai is in charge.

[charmides]

He serves at the discretion of Google's parent company, Alphabet, of which Page and Brin are CEO and President respectively.

[scarface74]

So they were “not evil” as long as they were being funded by investors and didn’t have a self sustaining business plan...

[fenwick67]

This is a common pattern that companies follow; make a good product now, make money later. Many products become crappy and companies go sour when they turn this corner.

[scarface74]

If a profit seeking company makes a product that isn’t profitable, how can it be considered “good”?

[fenwick67]

I'm speaking from a user/customer's perspective.

[scarface74]

Even from a user’s perspective, if a product is not profitable, it will either disappear or the company will have to do something user-hostile to achieve profitability.

I like simple business models. I give the company money and they give me stuff.

[elcomet]

What if it provides positive value for whole society ?

[taneq]

What was it, again, that we refer to as "the root of all evil"?

[scarface74]

It’s the love of money....