It's good to be aware of the likelihood of astroturfing. Everytime there's a newthread like this for one of the companies, there's a suspicious amount of similar plausible praise in an otherwise (sometimes brutally) skeptical forum.

The best way to shift or create consensus is to make everyone think everyone else's opinion has already shifted, and that consensus is already there. Emperor's new clothes etc..

Google can be evil and release impressive language models. The same way as Apple releasing incredible hardware with good privacy while also being a totally insufferable and arrogant company.

Gemini 2.5 is genuinely impressive.

Google employees only have to disclaimer when they're identified as Google employees.

So shit like "as a googler" requires "my opinions are my own yadda yadda"

why is Google more evil than say OpenAI ?