Now I'm going to have to e-mail all the friends I advocated Mendeley to, and tell them to consider switching. Serves me right for not looking more carefully at whose interests Mendeley was serving.
Yeah. My bad. I had a real need and Mendeley's software (which is awesome, by the way) came to my rescue; issues of who controls it and what they might want from me someday seemed very far away at the time.
This is how capitalism works. Companies (and individuals) try to maximise their own profits; and (ideally) the most profitable course of action is the one which is the most beneficial to the most people. Altruism has no place in it.
And yet, people are continually surprised and disappointed when a company takes a profitable course of action, rather than ignoring profits for altruistic reasons.
It's not a matter of altruism, it's a matter of reputation. I reasonably guessed that Mendeley would not try to screw scientists in the short run in order to preserve their reputation in the long run, all to benefit their own profit. However, Elsevier (1) does not have much of a good reputation to risk and (2) can also coordinate with its publishing arm to further multiply the benefit of screwing
scientists than Mendeley could alone. It might have been possible for me to predict this business move, but that's a very complicated calculation. I'm not unreasonable for failing to have done so. You can argue that it would have been more prudent to never trust any company that might be sold, but then you'd be criticizing my risk calculation and not my confusion about altruism.
Likewise, I could be surprised that a fancy restaurant replaced all their silverware with disposable plastic. It would maximize their profits that night, but destroy their reputation and hence long-term profits.
> yet, people are continually surprised and disappointed when a company takes a profitable course of action
I think this is a fairly recent phenomenon, that's gone hand in hand with the development of the Internet.
First, we had companies without business plans (or profits) that peaked in the 90s. That bubble burst, but the reputation of "something for nothing" has lingered.
Companies have since found new ways to monetize users (e.g. targeted advertising) in a way that's mostly transparent to the users. This has perpetuated the sense of "something for nothing" associated with online products and services.
:-(