> Not whataboutism at all; with historical context you might be able to see that this isn't a principal stand but possibly has some, yet unknown, commercial reason.

or experience and an authoritative source on the peril?

It's somewhat whataboutism because the whether the message is truthful does not rely on the source. i.e. Hitler could say genocide is bad, and he would still be correct even though he's Hitler.

It is relevant to the discussion to point out Jim Balsillie's relation to this topic. It's not a refutation of the point being made though. It's entirely possible that he has ulterior motives for making this argument that aren't based on it being morally (or event factually) correct, but it may be correct (or incorrect) separately from that.

Except the source has a very large incentive to besmirch Google and their business model, because Google is the very company that destroyed their business. Therefore, I'd take anything in this attack piece with a grain of salt, they are far from being the authoritative source on the subject.

Is whataboutism the modern incarnation of ad hominem?

Personally, I would classify these objections about Balsillie's arguments as ad hominem attacks. If the point he makes is logically coherent, what does his personal motivation it matter?

Whataboutism is an ad hominem fallacy when the context is US-Russia geopolitical relations. Traditionally it has been used to successfully ignore accurate observations about US/Russia, when the messenger is Russian/US respectively.

Here the concept has been extended to large multinational corporate relations.