I enjoyed this, well done! I’m just speaking for myself (but I know many of my colleagues agree) when I say that I don’t feel great about the source of our revenue. That being said, developing a rendering engine is very expensive (apparently even too expensive for Microsoft) and I’m not sure what the alternative is. Ironically, every time we do try to diversify (pocket, directory tiles, snippets etc), there is an even bigger backlash than the one about Google.
:: https://lobste.rs/s/b6jkt4/i_was_wrong_about_google_facebook...
I suppose Google and the rest would be the trojan horse?
There are hopeful trends, but it is a David against Goliath fight, going back and forth and really slowly.
The appearance of supporting privacy may not be mutually exclusive with openly invasive behavior, but actually supporting privacy is. I don't see the point you're trying to make but it seems as though your stance is that it's OK for X to appear to support privacy while actually invading it??
"True privacy" isn't the concern here. Data breaches and hacks are a security issue, this is an ethical one.