Well I hope people won't perceive this (nonexistent) stability in the future.

I'm not trying to "absolve" Google, nor do I think they're guilty. They used their reputation to hire people. It turns out that needs to be updated. Perhaps in the future they will do things to improve their reputation again? Who knows...

It just feels a little victim-blamey. Google manipulated thousands of people, and they got screwed in the process. Should they have known that big corporations are evil? Maybe, but I'm not going to blame someone who was misled by dishonest people.

If you're agreeing that they misled people by using their reputation in a way that's dishonest, how are they "not guilty"?

I agree Google's reputation misled people. But importantly, I don't think Google can be held accountable for their reputation and for what other people believed.

To give a somewhat contorted example: If people believe you give 1 Bitcoin to anyone who can recite the whole Beowulf, they will perhaps spend a lot of time learning Beowulf, forgoing other things. Then they find out you in fact have not promised them that and that you have no such obligation. I don't think you've misled them! Do they have a right to be angry with you? Or should they have checked with you what the precise conditions were before upending their life?

If I happily let them waste their time reciting Beowulf on purpose under false pretenses then I would be a douchebag.

Google knew that people would join based on a perception of stability. Did they hire 10,000 people knowing that they would fire them six months later? If so, they are jerks. If not, then they are so categorically idiotic as to think that they will just have free money for forever and interest rates would never ever go up. In either situation they are bad.