I see lot of hate for google and it was very evident when google acquired Fitbit. Lot of us wanted to just rid of pebble. Yet, I see lot of people trying to get into Google (or one of the FAANG companies). I saw it from Blind app posts but I understand demographics of Blind vs HN is different.
Although Google isn't all bad (no company is), I do think that on the whole they aren't a positive force. As a dev, I honestly can't think of anything that would make working for them seem like a good idea.
The news have been picked on (lack of) privacy for a few years now. On a side it has helped people to see what happens with their data. But on the other side the campaign against Google and Facebook had gone far beyond the reality of the time. Until the accusations made during this "hate campaign" became the new reality.
As people started to lose trust and "hate" picked up, the news kept going on their crusade picturing Google and Facebook as public enemy number one.
The public believed in the new public image of Google pictured by the newspapers.
As a few years ago as today, every time something bad can be written, the newspapers are going ahead and selectively pick information to write pieces of news with a click-bate title on how bad Google is. That surely gets clicks, and clicks bring page views, and page views bring revenues from advertisers.
The narrative has been clearly the 'Don't Be Evil' company is 'evil'. Google again did the wrong thing: https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...
Clearly the most concerned people have been the activist-kind of employees that Google has.
So now the company was attacked not only from the outside but also from the inside.
That made the the company even more reactive. Instead of ignoring the press and reinforce their unique culture, they decided to look at how they could avoid being pictured as the bad guys. But that made their accuser stronger.
There are a few other things that were going in the world and inside Google but I think that this is the biggest driver that turned Google in the hated company that is today.
It became a self fulfilling prophecy. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/31/google-veterans-the-company-...
I personally prefer Google and the only thing I don't have running in their systems is the fiber to my flat
Google's business model worked well until everybody was led to think that that model is "evil." I am fine to trade receiving some ads with free services. But unfortunately that is not the full story.
The data they collected started to be used for evil ends so there is some truth.
However as far as I know, on the current Internet having full privacy is an illusion. Your ISP or VPN provider in some regards know more about what you do when you are on the Internet than Google does.