I don't agree with it for any company. When the private sector crowds out basic research and takes over the function of public institutions, there are three reasonable scenarios. 1. they let the researchers do what they want and science goes on, 2. they're regulated so they can't compromise science, 3. they do what Google does, in which case it's time to take the gloves off and go to 2. because the integrity of scientific research for its own sake is more important than whatever corporate dystopia Google is trying to build.
This take does not make any sense to me. The scientific community is responsible for peer reviews and journals can operate however they’d like. Google is responsible for google and can submit/censor/only pay for research that they want to pay for. Good luck finding any academic that is not beholden to their source of funding.
Academia is not the “uncompromised land of science” that it may seem to be. What google is doing is par for the course. I have about 50 other complaints about academia before I get to my complaints about private companies censoring research (which I believe is a very harsh take on the situation at hand.)
If you agree with this statement for one company you should agree with it for another.