This headline is valuable in being so precisely mistaken.
I've been around Silicon Valley since the late 90s. It hasn't changed. What has changed is the amount of attention you can get by attacking it.
When Google was little, it seemed cute and inconsequential. To attack it would have seemed mean (and inconsequential). Now that Google is big, attacking it reads instead as "speaking truth to power." But Google is no more evil now than it was in the past. Which is not to say that Google was ever perfect, just that the change in reporters' attitudes toward it derives – whether the reporters realize it or not – from nothing more than its increased size.
I've been around Silicon Valley since the late 90s. It hasn't changed. What has changed is the amount of attention you can get by attacking it.
When Google was little, it seemed cute and inconsequential. To attack it would have seemed mean (and inconsequential). Now that Google is big, attacking it reads instead as "speaking truth to power." But Google is no more evil now than it was in the past. Which is not to say that Google was ever perfect, just that the change in reporters' attitudes toward it derives – whether the reporters realize it or not – from nothing more than its increased size.