I’ve certainly seen and heard of Google modifying results or puting punishments on users because they broach topics that violate their terms of service.

I will absolutely agree that the rules of their ToS are heavily determined by the desires of advertisers and written laws.

But just because they may restrict the content based off of advertiser’s wishes or because they are legally required to do so doesn’t mean that Google is in bed with the government and willing to do anything to prop up the government’s power so they can keep making money from them.

That’s a really big and important jump you can’t just hand wave away just because a company as large as Google works with the government on some things. That’s just conspiracy theory and detracts from the very real, evidence based criticisms we can and should be focusing on.

In order to make a claim like that you need two different evidences: one showing that they did remove content critical of the US and one showing that they removed it because they intended to use the removal to make more money

Just because they’ve done some things wrong doesn’t mean they have done everything that’s wrong. I would rather base my criticism on companies (or people or ideas) on true facts.

That means sometimes there’s an uncomfortable situation where an otherwise evil organization isn’t always evil in every situation, and that is ok.

It’s the obvious followup to your statement “shoplifting is happening because of capitalism. Period.” You were very clear and I think my question is very clear.

Would Coles paying their staff more prevent non employees from stealing?

Are you suggesting that nobody ever stole anything from a store in a socialist/communist country?