Yeah, when Google was founded, people acted like they were normal smart and benevolent and forward-thinking Internet techies (it was a type), and they got a lot of support and good hires because of that.

Then, even as that was eroding, they were still seen as reliable, IIRC.

The killedbygoogle reputation was more recent. And still I think isn't common knowledge among non-techies.

And even today, if you ask a techie which companies have certain reliability capabilities, Google would be at the top of some lists (e.g., keeping certain sites running under massive demand, and securing data against attackers).