And look how many Linux distro producing companies there are that are the size of Google or that earn even a significant fraction of what Google earns.

Linux is a totally different ballgame. It started out with open source and free access in mind. Linux distros are often made by volunteer developers who do it for the love of the game, non-profit companies, or companies that have found some way to monitize it like RHEL. And companies certainly pay for support, standardization, and exhaustive stability validation. There’s also the commercial use of Red Hat’s customizations, and arguably faster responses to patching vulnerabilities.

Hate to break it to you, but you are not Google’s customer. Don’t believe me? How much did you pay for Chrome?

This move is in fact being made with their actual customers in mind.

There’s a reason scam artists target the elderly. If a box on the computer screen says “put payment info here” then who are they to argue with the box?

They were always going to. As long as Xitter has a user base with money to spend, the large corporations do not care. Anything they do like withdrawing advertising is all for show.

And after all, are you going to cancel your Netflix subscription over this? I actually probably would personally but my partner uses it quite a lot, so we’re sticking around. Some people will cancel no doubt but nowhere near a critical mass that will affect their bottom line and they know it.