Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it doesn't have to be, but I have very little faith in Google to make any choices that even border on altruistic when it's far more profitable to exploit us. I think there's a case to be made here that Google's motivations can mirror those of the users and that it's in Google's best long term interest for that to be the case. It seems obvious to me that a company that can be aligned with their customer's desires…
> Rather, my point is that there is no law of economics that guarantees users and corporations must be in conflict or that corporations will always do better financially by exploiting users to the users' detriment (or that a competitor that does that will beat one that doesn't). But isn't there? I think the core point of Meditations on Moloch[0] was that there kind of is , that in the limit, competitive environments…
However those don't conflict with my point that there is nothing preventing a firm and the sum of their users from having strictly aligned goals in the context of their relationship.
Competition simply means that there could be other firms who may be able to align their goals with users goals more tightly, and run the other firm out of business. Much more to be probed here, like consistency, short and long term goals and desire/goal uncertainty on the part of the user and firm. None of those seem to be intractable issues.