[tikhonj]

I think it's more a reaction to their general recent policy of doing far less away from their core business. They used to have a ton of projects with a very relaxed attitude about making money from any given project. Now that they've given up on focusing on that much beyond their bottom line, they're acting much more like other large companies which is not necessarily a good thing.

[IgorPartola]

Like self driving cars and Google Glass? Or the cheap/free fiber optic Internet access? Or free Wi-Fi in NYC? I do not think you know what evil means...

[codesuela]

Also Android, I'd vote for Android over Google Reader every day and associated services like Play/Google Play Music (which is awesome by the way you should check it out) and hardware (Nexus 7). Oh and Go(lang) and Chrome with V8 which lead to Node JS being borne.

[guard-of-terra]

Self driving cars are like Microsoft Hailstorm. It's all bombast for now and then somebody clever will steal their lunch. And it is a deviation from their Google core.

[IgorPartola]

And lack of deviation from the core tech that brings in no immediate profit is what tikhonj called "evil".

[mratzloff]

You're asserting that providing free Internet access isn't evil? Have you ever once considered how it benefits Google? What possible motivations Google might have to want to know everything users do online?

So, here it is: Google does nothing altruistically. They are an ad company, and search is a fundamental component in service to that. Data collection is one fundamental pillar, establishing Google search on every device is another.

[wutbrodo]

This may be the most tinfoil-hat-oriented post I have ever read on HN. To paraphrase: "Google benefits in some way from Google Fiber, so it's EVIL!!!!1"

Surely you can see how utterly insane that is? Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that Google Fiber is 100% altruistic by any means. The position that a large base of Fiber installations would put them in is enviable in a number of ways, involving several of the markets they're involved in. However, completely dismissing the possibility that they saw an opportunity to disrupt the necrotic oligopoly BS we have in the ISP market and jumping straight to "EVIL!!" is beyond ridiculous. Google certainly has done a lot of things in the last few years that belie their early image, but the amount of times that "evil" has been thrown around to describe them is just laughable.

tl;dr: The definition of "not evil" is not "a 100% charitable endeavor with no conceivable benefit".

[mratzloff]

Well, first, I think you're reading too much into my use of the word "evil". But by your absolutist definition there's no reasonable way Google can violate this ethic they've imposed on themselves.

Any company of sufficient size will be "evil", in that they will act in an anti-competitive, anti-user, or anti-interoperability way if it benefits their stock price. There is no other consideration. I'm sure everyone can think of things Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook have done that they would consider "evil" by that definition.

Building a fiber network with the primary goal of gathering data on what users do online (perhaps after clicking on a Google search result from the Google Chrome browser), and being able without any trouble whatsoever to tie that back to an individual is, if not "evil", at least fairly creepy. And there are plenty of other benefits to controlling user access literally from the desktop to the Internet backbone.

Google is not unique in this. Every large software company is trying to wall off users so they can control their access. Google, however, enjoys enormous goodwill with some people as a result of their motto and innovator status.

[tmzt]

What's the point of a car that drives itself if there is nothing to read while you're driving? I was seriously looking forward to that - or even a text to speech app that reads Reader feeds.

[calbucci]

My friend, you just won the Best Comment Ever award!

[OGinparadise]

Like self driving cars and Google Glass? Or the cheap/free fiber optic Internet access? Or free Wi-Fi in NYC?

Self driving cars, like this http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57367893-71/a-self-driving... or http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/04/autos/toyota-self-driving-ca... or http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416535,00.asp ?

Tell me what's so amazing, never done before, about Glass? Google is seeing ads there.

Fiber and WIFI, while extremely limited in geography* and are great, until Google pulls the plug. That's the point.

*There's no "Free wifi in NYC from Google", just in a tiny neighborhood.

[icebraining]

The claim was that Google was moving away from products with a "relaxed attitude about making money", not "amazing, never done before", and the examples show they aren't.

until Google pulls the plug. That's the point.

Google has always done that. I don't understand where the rose colored glasses about Schmidt's time come from.