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> it's a risky road to go down for everyone, including Google What's risky about it for Google? They can back down at any time they want (this includes injecti

• barrkel 10y ago
  Large companies attract a particular type of executive: they see what a company's current strength is, and try to leverage that strength into advantages in other areas by sheer force, rather than competing and producing better products or services. It's perceived by a lot of people as ramming a product or service down people's throats, it creates resentment, and at the margin - where the leveraged strength approaches monopoly - it's illegal. I'm of the opinion that infestation of upper ranks of companies by these kinds of people is what ultimately leads to their demise (or rather, regression to the mean of mediocrity). These people use up goodwill and generate resentment. When they're given too much leeway, they can push hard enough to attract government anti-trust attention and tie the company up in knots for years. They suck the soul out of companies by promoting a nihilistic vision of capitalism. They encourage attributing cynical motivations about any future action of the company (think Microsoft); it can take decades to shake that off. So, the risks are both reputational and potentially regulatory, and they're cumulative. Yes, Google has cost goodwill in the past; but they don't have zero goodwill yet, and nor do they have infinite goodwill.