> They did dirty stuff with Chrome, they do addiction optimization, but they also provide great free services, fight endless wars against spammers, and provide reliable secure infrastructure to a lot of other people, and lots of other good things.

As mconnor liked to say, there is no free lunch. :)

> I would never have joined the Chrome team, or worked on addictiveness, but I felt fine about working on optimization projects to make Google more efficient, which is basically what I did for my first few years there.

Ultimately, I don't think you can divide your niche from the corporation's primary goals (especially if you think it was your duty to be a good employee), so I disagree with your rationalization but kudos for at least having a moral compass and trying not to lose sight of it.

> It's pretty hard to live in the world and be completely disconnected from anything unethical.

Sure, but I don't think that should be an excuse for being fairly well connected.