[HanayamaTriplet]

The key is in your last paragraph: the companies in question are privately owned in the sense of "private property". In the context of (American) public policy, due to factors such as the First Amendment, the distinction of a company being governmental/public vs non-governmental/private is much more likely to be relevant than it being publicly/privately traded.

[psyc]

My point is 0.0000006% of companies are governmental. In the context of the discussion, nobody is even thinking of those. So, “private” as a qualifier is hot air. It sounds ignorant to me.

[izacus]

Ignorant of what? Publicly (as in government) owned base infrastructure companies (like telecoms, to which Google et. al. are pretty similar in these ethics cases) are not rare in the world at all.