It's not that people thought Google weren't a company, they thought Google was a company with a long term vision that valued reputation and quality. Google had/

It's not that people thought Google weren't a company, they thought Google was a company with a long term vision that valued reputation and quality. Google had/has a reputation for paying clever people to produce innovative products. We all want such products to exist, and a lot of us would like to work on making more of them (without necessarily having to join a start up). The fact that they managed to keep that reputation (what you call a religion) for so long means they genuinely valued it. Now it seems like Google is shifting to a more short term vision. They have begun leveraging their market power rather than relying on product quality to gain market share. In doing so they are starting to sacrifice their reputation. For big company this is an attractive approach over the short term. A reputation for high quality can be expensive to maintain, and products can become very long term risky investments. It's more profitable in the short term to create the illusion of quality while using tactics that hamper the competition or restrict consumer choices. However, that leads to stagnation and eventually the company becomes obsolete. You might see start ups as being idealistic, and Google's previous behaviour as being benevolent. However, start ups aren't charities and Google made a boat load of money. It's not really about morality. It's more that big companies have incentives to follow particular short term strategies that ultimately stifle innovation and prevent technological progress. A big company with long term vision forces its competitors to innovate to keep up and helps change the technological landscape in a way that start ups are not able to.