> What does that even mean?

Read HN from 10 years ago. Posters were gushing about how cool and amazing Google is, how much good they are doing to the tech industry, how more companies should be like than and do ethical things like they do, for example support open standards and source instead of proprietary systems.

They were saying that Google is a company run by techies who value hacking ethics ideals and not by business men who only care about money.