[rixed]

> the idea that google are particularly careful with users data is pretty laughable

Either you don't know what you are talking about, or we attach very different meanings behind some of these words. Let me rephrase : of all companies, institutions or associations that I've been able to glance from the inside in my already quite long carrier, Google was by far the one where user data was the most secured, from unlegitimate access from the outside world or from the employees alike.

Also, of all the big internet corporations, I've read many stories about facebook or microsoft (amongst others) cooperating with the most repressive regimes. On rare occasion where I could read about some big corp prefering to loose a market rather than user trust, each time it was either Apple or Google. Granted, it was many years ago; But already after Google was regularly presented by EU "opinion makers" like the most evil of corporations.

Witnessing this and the ensuing downward trajectory of morale in big IT corporations, I half-jokingly developped the theory that maybe corporations are like little children: they behave just as well as they are expected to. If you constantly tell them that they are immoral and stupid, then they become just that.