You know, I've come to think of Google as less of a corporation and more of a country lately. Most of their products act more like a sort of public service for their citizens, subsidized through ad revenue rather than taxes.
So far, it's had a pretty good track record for a country, no doubt due to the fact that it's still technically a corporation, but still, not too bad.
Still, it has its issues. There are many countries that can only dream of obtaining the data Google has on its citizens. Many of them have tried, and thankfully, for the time being, Google has been more or less protective of this data. Then there's their whole policy of axing infrastructure and services (products) whenever they deem fit, and by fit I mean unprofitable. Depending on your political views, this can be seen as either irresponsible or efficient. Regardless, its inconvenient for those who were using the service, and most efforts to put a service on the chopping block have something to do with trying to get more people to migrate to Google+, possibly to collect more data and serve up more ads, a very bizarre synthesis of increasing taxes and surveillance.
So maybe Google doesn't want to be a country of the internet. Tough. That's what they grew into, and the only way to avoid it is to shrink and pivot and lay off a lot of people who are essentially the Google equivalent of government employees.
Until then, we're right to be critical and cautious towards Google's actions, a responsibility even, otherwise they're liable to really screw up.