These kind of posts (and the amount of anti-Google articles here) make me think that Google is currently targeted by paid trolling/smear campaign.
(ex-Googler, have yet to read anything genuinely surprising in the past few weeks)
It's ironic, because Apple fans were painted as carrying the sledge hammer of inconvenient truth, not acting like the grey drones who oppress all differences of opinion in the 1984 commercial.
Oh who am I kidding, it must be Russians.
I read an article describing the fenomenon, I can't find it now but there's plenty of interesting results if you search Google.
I'd be surprised if people were selling HN accounts for this purpose, it's much easier to reach a larger audience, and have more impact, on a general social media site than HN. I wouldn't suspect the practice is likely to happen here.