Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

More on Google OmniCorp at the Times today:

Nowadays, when venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and technologists gather in Silicon Valley, they often find themselves grousing about Google, complaining about everything from a hoarding of top engineers to its treatment of partners and potential partners. The word arrogant is frequently used.

The news last week that Google plans to sell an additional 14 million shares of stock, adding $4 billion to its current cash reserves of $3 billion, will only provide more reasons to gripe.

"I've definitely been picking up on the resentment," said Max Levchin, a founder of PayPal, the online payment service now owned by eBay. "They're a big company now, doing things people didn't expect them to do."

Mr. Levchin, who last year founded a multimedia company in San Francisco called Slide, said Google "still has a long wick of good will to burn off," but he added, "I'm surprised at how fast the company's reputation is changing."

NYT

Now, I anyone who reads this space has seen rants about Google behaving like, well, a corporation: stupid CnD letter, employee speech policies that seem... counterintuitive... in it's space and in it's mission statement.

All this aside, however, as a user and even as an IT worker, I still can't say I have a problem with Google. They do good work, they do it in open ways, on open standards and with open source, and, they (generally) let people freely build on their infrastructure without many hangups, they (for the most part) behave like I would want to see a software giant behave.

I mean, really, next to Microsoft or IBM (of 15 years ago).