As a Berliner, I find it hard to understand the resistance. On the one hand everybody cries out here about the rising rent and the stagnating wages and on the other hand there is this opposition against bigger companies (e. g. Google or big media companies at the Spree). Gentrification will happen anyway because of investors buying off apartments, houses or complete blocks. Berlin has one of the highest tax on purchasing housing space in Germany which is really bad for people buying apartments but doesn't matter for investors that buy as a business since they can get them partially back with their tax returns (not possible if you use the space yourself instead of renting it out).
Big companies would give the market some incentive to raise the wages, which I know is at first bad for small startups but also attracts so much talent that it will balance out at some point (I hope).
I guess this is part of the Berlin culture, being innovative and free minded but also being completely against any change. Only 10 waking minutes away from the future Google campus there is this big fight about reworking the riverside of the Landwehrkanal which should make it accessible for Wheelchairs and baby strollers as well as bikes but people are protesting, living in one of the best appartments with still cheap rent because of their old contracts. Before that there was this even bigger fight about a small part of the old Tempelhof airport area. The city planned to build houses and office space there. I can't imagine any other city (with a housing crisis) where people would oppose to this. The fear was that a nature reservation area would suffer which according to plan would have been not be the case.
Probably it's a matter of view points, there are the new economy workers like myself waiting for companies to settle in Berlin (not so many there because of the cities history) and then there is the other side with people in really low paying jobs that fear exclusion, totally valid. I don't have numbers but I could imagine that Berlin as quite a bit discrepancy between low and high income households with quite many on the lower end because it has so few big industries.
Cheap Berlin only exists in some parts and mainly myths. Friends of mine pay the same rent in Munich for comparable apartments while going out can be cheaper in Berlin but only if you know where to go, the beer price is mostly the same, food depends. The wages are much lower in Berlin, for developers it's at junior entry at around 10.000€ per year less.