[elicash]

> could jeopardize their stance with other, less controversial, entities

That would, of course, be a terrible and illegal abuse of power and essentially be the government policing political speech by private individuals. What an indictment of our government (and I don't mean a single person, but of the system itself) that this seems to be an uncontroversial statement. Because I agree, it's true, and it's the mark of terrible corruption.

[alonmower]

I’m not sure it needs to even be as nefarious as that. If I’m in charge of deciding what technology to use for another, less controversial, arm of the government and I see that one of the companies I’m considering has decided to stop doing business with another I might feel less confident in deciding whether or not to use them. What if they decide they don’t want to do business with me at some point in the future?

That might be overly naive and I agree that there’s great potential for corruption here as well.

[iguy]

Or not even an arm of the government. The same reasoning would be applied by other companies buying services. Vendors with a reputation for stopping service to clients because of bad news coverage are a risker bet.

[pmiller2]

That doesn't seem to affect Google much, and we all know how big G loves killing off products.

[iguy]

Have they killed many paid products?

I think there is justified wariness about building too much on top of any service given away for free.

[pmiller2]

Explain all the businesses built on YouTube, then. YT is "free" to most consumers (paid for by ads), but there are literally people who make their livings as YouTube personalities.

[iguy]

What's to explain? All the people who chose not to do this, because it didn't seem like a safe enough business model?

[jfoster]

Choosing business partners based on the degree to which you can expect stability & reliability from them is not corrupt.

Not everything has to be political & tribal.

[elicash]

OP wasn't specific, but I interpreted it as government threatening action against the company -- such as the IRS opening an investigation of their taxes.

But let's take your example, since you aren't the only one who interpreted it that way. That would be covered by the scope of the government contract being awarded during the normal bidding and contract process. The contract would stipulate the terms by which one party could pull out of the deal. What would be illegal would be for political influence to discourage the awarding of that contract.

[malandrew]

Why would that be an abuse of power? The company has demonstrated that they are an unreliable government partner.

It's wholly different to not accept a contract in the first place, but to unilaterally end it for any reason, political or otherwise, is grounds to consider that service provider unreliable.

[munk-a]

The contract was brought to an end - but did the company prove they were an unreliable partner or did the government? These calls to end government association aren't coming from no where - these government acts don't have majority support and it's gotten to the point where individuals are feeling the need to take on personal risk to ensure that the government is actually aligned with the citizenry.

[lukevdp]

> but did the company prove they were an unreliable partner or did the government?

The company.

You can support the employees without needing to twist reality. There is no question that ending service on non service related grounds makes a company unpredictability unreliable.

[throwaway0a5e]

The likelihood of a potential vendor to actually be able to supply what they say they will has long been a consideration for government agencies. The novel thing here is that "political winds may change" is not normally considered a good reason to have that doubt for a US based company.