[recoiledsnake]

In a number of comments on HN I get the impression that people believe Google to be a more "open" and less evil company and thus should be trusted more but here you're comparing them to other companies considered "evil" and saying it's okay for Google to behave the same way.

Also, lack of social media integration isn't that important a feature of search engines. Also it is likely that UbuntuOS/Jolla/FirefoxOS/Bada also get the same treatment from Google?

[wamatt]

There used to be an understated, but strong implication, that Google is 'good', Microsoft is 'evil', and perhaps justifiably so: Microsoft didn't exactly make a good impression on geekdom during the 90's.

These days however, and speaking from a purely subjective perspective, Microsoft appears to be slightly softer and humbler, whilst Google under Page appears to be confident, maybe even aggressive and certainly increasingly ubiquitous. It's the last part that concerns me most.

Apple, Google and Microsoft however all pale by comparison when placed on the same scale as non-profit Mozilla Corp, in terms of openness and looking after our rights and freedoms.

Personally I'm somewhat of a bannerless citizen, but at least in theory, that's an organization that could receive my support.

[georgemcbay]

I used to believe Google was more "open" and "less evil", because they were.

I no longer believe those things, because they aren't true anymore (but they did used to be true).

I still use a lot of Google products and services (gmail, Nexus 4, google maps, search, ARM Chromebook, Go, etc) because I am more pragmatic than idealist, but now I view Google as being capable of being just as dicky as any other big company when it suits them, because that's how they've been behaving for the past couple of years.

I think it is unfortunate they don't make the APIs more equally available to all platforms, but I'm not going to start a riot or boycott them over it... they are just a big business being a big business, and yes, occasionally doing "evil" (for very first-world-problem definitions of "evil").

[Svip]

Maemo never did. I had a N900, and one of its standard YouTube app allowed you to download videos, which seems to be one of Google's issues with the Windows Phone app. I never recall Google sending a mail to Nokia about that. Maybe nobody used Maemo? Or the fact that it did not have a kill switch?