That's the message you hear as you move the slider over the company: from the left, the founding conscientious engineers, and to the right, the profit-maximizing, late and lateral entry executives.
The Google founders have managed to create this amazing narrative that they’re the good guys while all the bad decisions are just taken by the new money grubbing execs. I don’t think that’s accurate. I think they presided over a hyper growth stage of the company and left well before the pressures of profit maximization started to direct the company.
It’s extremely difficult for a company to not do things that would maximize its profits. I don’t think the Founder-Good narrative is productive, it doesn’t work. One possible way to limit the harm is by regulations (or enforcement of existing ones), to make “evil” activity more expensive and thus not an option.
>The Google founders have managed to create this amazing narrative that they’re the good guys while all the bad decisions are just taken by the new money grubbing execs.
Page and Brin are still board members and controlling shareholders of Alphabet. It's foolish to assume they don't share responsibility for the current state of Google and the rest of Alphabet's properties.
Centralization, control and censorship are on the authoritarian–liberal axis of the standard two-dimensional political compass, not on the left–right axis.