Full Disclosure: I work for Google. The opinions stated here are my own. I respectfully disagree. Often the consulting company is a very valid way to pay for t

Full Disclosure: I work for Google. The opinions stated here are my own. I respectfully disagree. Often the consulting company is a very valid way to pay for the development of the Open Source Software. It's a practical way to do OSS and still make a living. That in no way detracts from the usefulness of the Open Source development Model or the freedom of that software. Google's SOC is primarily a way find and incent good developers. It helps to expand the pool of hirable talent. In our Chicago office we've hired our fair share of former GSOC alumni. We don't limit the applications to any class of project so while some of the work may indeed be useful to us commercially, a lot of it isn't. As far as gaming search engine results and changing api's I'm not even sure where you're going with that one? I'm sure you have valid examples of badly done open source but painting the whole class of software with that same brush is a mistake.