Google was a great place - for most people - when it was riding the crazy growth rocket that was its Search/Adwords/Adsense/Analytics engine. (former Googler he

Google was a great place - for most people - when it was riding the crazy growth rocket that was its Search/Adwords/Adsense/Analytics engine. (former Googler here) As those growth rates slowed it started flailing around trying to kickstart them in other ways. It had to do this to keep the stock in the stratosphere, which kept the mid-to-senior managers rich, and gave the ones who weren't yet rich the possibility of becoming so. Some of these attempts were questionable ethically. Similarly, privacy invading changes were made in the core business. People all the way to Larry & Sergey told themselves and everyone else the same lies that their ceaseless profiling and other invasions were for the customers own good. Think G+'s real names policy, Google Glass's creepy stalker potential, etc. The engagement in dubious if completely legal tax dodges was another sign. As was the army of lobbyists, as was the work on censored search. In any case, it's sort of inevitable in stock-market driven capitalism that unicorns can't slow down gracefully, with everyone being satisfied that their millions or billions are 'enough.' I wish they could. I suspect it's doubly-hard for a company when their outlandish success attracts people primarily driven by money. All that growth meant a ton of hiring, and i suspect people who really just wanted to get rich self-selected into the applicant pool. Beyond that, instances of sexual harassment and their cover-up suggests that maybe their was never a big commitment to not 'be evil'. At least when it came down to powerful execs and less-powerful women. Maybe it was always just another company. I used to be really proud of my time at Google, and I still think it was, and probably still is, a better than the rogues gallery of tech's giant offenders (Uber, Facebook, Amazon). But the pride I felt in working there is gone. I believe Jeff Bezos is the greatest businessman we've seen since Ford or Rockefeller, but his insatiable need for not just more, but everything, has kept him from being a great human and Amazon from being a great company in anything other than the most narrow economic sense.