Google I/O is a developer conference and they give out free hardware to attendees, the majority of whom are hopefully developers, in order to get them to develo

Google I/O is a developer conference and they give out free hardware to attendees, the majority of whom are hopefully developers, in order to get them to develop on their platforms. They give free review units to journalists for evaluation which is pretty standard practice. They don't "buy" positive articles. For example, most reviews of the Chromebook Pixel, acknowledge it is a very nice, well built machine, but then turn around and list all of the reasons you shouldn't buy one: price, limited capability, similarly priced MacBook Air, etc. So much for free hardware buying rave reviews from tech journalists. Google is perceived as a friendly giant because it mostly is a friendly giant. If you compare it to other corporate actors, like Microsoft who just handed over patents to a patent troll, it is a much better corporate citizen. Sure, it isn't perfect, but your conception of Google is delusional.