>Moves like this make it clear that they're becoming ever more concerned with the corporate agenda (pushing G+ in this case) than the hacker spirit.
The frustrating thing for some of us was that this is how it has always been and trying to point it out to people just got you shouted down. Google has always been about making money, what else? Watching otherwise intelligent hackers get so genuinely bamboozled by a simple motto has been surprising, to say the least.
Well, there is making money and making money. What's particularly frustrating and different about this one is that they used to be smart about it, but now they have deliberately destroyed a useful service with a fanatical following in favor of corporate buzzword dream that so far appears to be dead on arrival just like its two predecessors. A few years before that, they made a name making money off of something that actually was useful and disruptive.
Yeah, it's not a new thing, but I wouldn't say always. Like many of us I've been using Google for its entire lifetime. The motto got introduced at around the halfway mark in 2005 or 2006 if I remember correctly. That was also the time the censorship in China scandal erupted. I think before this there was less concern about their motivations, but I may just be misremembering.
I've been around for the whole lifetime as well and what I remember was technical people gushing all over google for every little thing. I don't remember when the motto came out but I remember that being the point where I knew I didn't like google anymore: to me that sort of thing is just blatant manipulation, which is intelligence-insulting.
We're on the same page. Honestly I'm not even that upset about Reader, I mean it's hardly a surprise.
I looked it up and they announced the motto with the IPO in 2004. Sometimes I think I compare their actions now to my expectations of the pre-IPO company; it doesn't really make sense.
The frustrating thing for some of us was that this is how it has always been and trying to point it out to people just got you shouted down. Google has always been about making money, what else? Watching otherwise intelligent hackers get so genuinely bamboozled by a simple motto has been surprising, to say the least.