In a publicity crisis, like a data breach, Google receives less outrage and pushback from users than Facebook because it provides genuinely useful services
What Google gained by giving up on social networks — There are bad bugs, and there are worse bugs. Tweets: @tonyromm , @robertmclaws , @mattnavarra , and @mattnavarra Tweets: Tony Romm / @tonyromm : i'm old enough to remember the time when they accidentally collected stuff over wifi, got in trouble with the feds over buzz, got fined over safari and a bunch other stuff.... http://twitter.com/... Robert McLaws / @robertmclaws : That is a bullshit argument. Microsoft provides genuinely useful services and they get lambasted every time something bad happens. That's not the reason. Dig deeper. http://twitter.com/... Matt Navarra / @mattnavarra : 2/ ...Pull it all together with points mentioned and other factor, and you start to see why people view FB as the enemy, but yet Google's bad behaviour gets less attention and doesn't stir up an anti-Google movement. Matt Navarra / @mattnavarra : 1/ Totally agree with @CaseyNewton here http://www.theverge.com/...Facebook has a cold, abstract, impersonal brand identityAdd FB's trust issues and Google's warmer, friendly, and more personable brand personality...
Context & Ripple Effects
The Verge's argument lands three days after sources told the Wall Street Journal about a Google+ bug that went undisclosed from 2015 to mid-2018 partly out of fear of blowback — a case study in whether that fear was even warranted. The piece says yes: users forgive Google's crises because Search, Gmail and Maps are load-bearing parts of their day, while Facebook's social feed is easier to resent.
Not everyone buys the utility theory — Robert McLaws pushes back that Microsoft provides genuinely useful services and still gets hammered, so something beyond usefulness is doing the work. The arc since has leaned toward the article's side: a later survey of 1,200 US adults put Google's favorability at 90% against Facebook's 66%, and internal reporting on Google's ongoing struggle to balance privacy against business interests suggests the goodwill is spent as fast as it is earned.
First-order effects
- Google absorbs comparatively mild user backlash over the undisclosed Google+ exposure, while Facebook carries the reference standard for breach outrage — an asymmetry that directly lowers the reputational price of Google's next mistake.
- Facebook's crisis playbook now gets benchmarked against Google's quieter ones, raising pressure on Facebook's communications and policy teams every time a peer's slip goes under-punished.
Second-order effects
- If utility buys forgiveness, disclosure incentives warp: Google's fear-of-blowback calculus on the Google+ bug looks miscalibrated in hindsight, but the same soft landing encourages other high-utility platforms to delay disclosure rather than race to notify.
- Microsoft's counterexample — useful services, still lambasted — forces the debate past 'usefulness' toward what else drives outrage (perceived data misuse, ad-model resentment), sharpening how rivals like Microsoft position their own privacy messaging.
Third-order effects
- Trust starts functioning as infrastructure: platforms embedded in daily workflows accumulate a reputational buffer that compounds, while lower-utility networks face structurally harsher scrutiny for identical failures — a durable moat no product launch can quickly close.
- If the pattern holds, regulators and press attention concentrate on the least-forgiven firms first, meaning sector-wide erosion of trust (the post-election gaffe cycle already underway) lands unevenly rather than uniformly across big tech.
The trend: Big tech reputations are diverging along a utility line: indispensable services bank goodwill that absorbs scandals, while social platforms without that buffer pay full price for each one.