[coldtea]

>That experiment was halted because it didn't move the security metrics as much as they wanted

So they hypocritically said. In fact it was halted because there was blowback from users and pundits concerned with this.

>It is therefore very obvious that the conspiracy surrounding the motivation was ridiculous.

Well, I have a bridge in Brookly to sell...

[ithkuil]

You may be right, it's logically possible. We don't know.

But you seem pretty darn sure about that, and people who are too much sure about something can be easily sold another kind of bridge.

[coldtea]

Perhaps, but it's one of the safest bets to make that huge multinationals with billions of private interests do things for profit, rather than for "the customers", "to change the world", and so on.

It takes a special kind of naivety to believe something like Google's early "Don't be evil" slogan.