[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?

[pmiller2]

Right, they choose to do it on top of a Google-run service they don’t pay for. According to you, this shouldn’t be happening.