The fairly small number of people I know who are Googlers or Xooglers are all pretty awesome as techies and as people. That does little to change my opinion of Google itself. Sometimes it makes me even more cynical, thinking that management might take special care in internal messaging lest the rank-and-file revolt.

But from my perspective, from the outside, what Google does as a company is what counts for me and for society. All the good people inside don't ameliorate the external behavior of the company.