In any case, "Starbucks" didn't prevent me from having some good homemade coffee for a few months now.

[1]: http://googleblog.blogspot.pt/2011/09/fall-spring-clean.html

Look, just because you want something to happen doesn't make it viable in the long term, and someone who demonstrated it was not viable in the long term doesn't become evil because they sped that process up. If they actually burned down all the other coffee bars in the process, that's one thing, but they didn't. They convinced folks to be satisied with something else.

You have literally just said "What if the remaining users are not enough to support a viable product I liked".

Then there aren't enough to support a non-viable product you liked, and that wouldn't be any different no matter how it happened. The only difference is it happened in 5 years instead of 50. If the other way was still something that satisfied people, one would assume others would eventually revert to it.

All drugs have some set of side effects, and usually very badly effect some small percentage of the population that won't know until the take them. Does this alone make releasing any drug evil?

If not, can we please just move the discussion along into social utility territory, instead of the "well, it hurt someone somewhere, so it's evil" stuff?

Contrary the misquoting a few parents up, the statement was "don't be evil" not "do no evil". This is an attempt to be guided by doing the right thing, not an attempt to ever avoid harming anyone. Basically, whether someone is being evil or not is not about you, it's about them.

Consumer habits, laws and lots of other things can and are changed by businesses, and it's naive to think that all or even most of these changes are inevitable or for the better just because they happen.

I think it's to simplistic to ask whether a certain company is being evil or not. The discussion about what is evil and not isn't very relevant to someone who just lost their business because some algorithm tripped inside Google and nobody inside Google can help. It would be better if Google committed itself to more concrete promises about how to treat their customers and what not to do, and had independent audits to keep them honest. But as long as they are as dominant as they are, they'll never have to.

Are you saying that Google created Reader eight years ago, with the only purpose of now killing it to somehow feed Google+? If they actually did so, then I'm in impressed by their long-term thinking, but I don't see how you can derive that conclusion. (And I'm further not convinced at all that killing Reader suits their business goals in any way, except for not having to waste manpower maintaining it)

I don't think Google had any plans for Reader except that making Reader would be neat. And then they decided that killing it off would be a better idea. I'm certain that it's hurting their business long-term.

A real-life example might be their 'free WiFi'. They are well within their rights to stop doing this tomorrow if they choose to. Good luck to anyone who complains because their business is affected because they chose to base themselves out of a Starbucks!

That's why it is illegal (in some countries at least).

Anti-dumping laws make sense when you're talking about hard goods with a concrete marginal cost of goods sold (like coffee.) Theydon't make much sense for web sites and software.