Ideals like that are the sort of thing you expect companies to abandon after a few years. And the idealism has been draining from google for years. It barely

Ideals like that are the sort of thing you expect companies to abandon after a few years. And the idealism has been draining from google for years. It barely exists anymore beyond internal-facing perks and their cult-ish belief that their shit doesn't stink. That letter also included the famous "don't be evil." Does anyone really think that in a few hundred years time, people aren't going to look back and laugh at the feeble rationalizations that have currently taken hold to convince otherwise clued-in people that the most pervasive surveillance apparatus in the world isn't at least a little bit evil?