I'm by no means a fanboy. From what I understand the salary thing wasn't exactly a conspiracy, but it was an extremely poor policy. I don't think anybody has much to complain about in terms of the benefits package from google, though.

In terms of "big companies", their sins are relatively innocuous, and if I wanted to work in big tech they'd be #1 on my list given the technology & resources that they make available. I'd certainly never work for Apple, Facebook, Oracle or Microsoft. I'd need a lot of convincing to work for Amazon.