[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.