He well might be arguing in bad faith (it's Crunch...) but, to bring up that quote that gets trotted out on HN every week about people not understanding things when their paycheck depends on not understanding them, it would be much more impressive, and "purported" would be much less applicable, if they were protesting not against some theoretical future project that does not affect their current paycheck, but against surveillance, vacuuming of private information, censorship, filter bubbles -- all those things that Google is doing right now. But somehow we don't see any of that.

There might be survivorship bias at play. Those against Google current practices are more likely to have quit already or not work for Google in the first place.

True (not that those practices were something extremely current though), but it doesn't make complaining about Dragonfly, which neither exists, nor will make much difference in regards to China's oppression, any less pathetic. Something tells me thwat all those "made by Google" doodads, phones, and wifis and all, aren't made by magical flying unicorns right in Mountain View.

and Google's Corporate Tax avoidance.