It's the never ending battle between ideology vs pragmatism. In a perfect world, I'm sure they'd love to stick to their original creed of "Don't be evil", but p

It's the never ending battle between ideology vs pragmatism. In a perfect world, I'm sure they'd love to stick to their original creed of "Don't be evil", but pragmatism dictates that occasionally they have to bend their own rules from time to time to make sure food gets on the table for their thousands of employees. I'm not saying you're right or wrong, but I get the sense that most HNers fall into the "pragmatism" camp. In this particular case, my bat-sensor isn't really detecting anything malevolent afoot. They and their partners have been getting hammered on all sides by patent lawsuits and Google has more than enough cash to come out swinging, and this is a major show of muscle to let people know they're not going to get pushed around like some two bit small company.