Evil Tech Company

Recently I've been reminiscing about the good-old-days, a simpler time when things were clear - you might remember those times; Microsoft was Evil, Apple was rubbish, innovations seemed to occur month on month, and Google - who were they.

These days things are much more complex. In the wake of the News International phone hacking scandal, I've been trying to figure out which technology company is now the most evil - although I've kept this really simple.

Microsoft; do they still hold the crown?
Historically they tried to stifle the open source movement. Subsequently they've started to release a few open source projects themselves.

Apple;
Being judge and jury on apps released to users, seemingly preventing or delaying competitors from offering apps on Apple devices. There Mac OS is based on Linux, and whilst they have a few open source projects I think its fair to say people generally consider Apple to take much more than they give back.

Google;
Whilst compiling street view data, Google's vehicles recorded wifi traffic from homes and businesses as they passed by. Google appear to give-back to the open source community much more than Microsoft and Apple, but lets be fair here - Google use alot of free software, and whilst there contributions to some projects are large, in other projects they clearly aren't feeding back many contributions.

I think it's fair to say that there isn't a saint among these large companies - certainly things are much more complex than they used to be.