the bottom line

Do you and/or your company strive to provide a good service or product to your clients, and are your customers generally happy with those products/services?

Why do I get two very different vibes from two very different companies operating in many of the same sectors? Case in point Apple and Google.

Apple - I'm a long running apple fan, and have way more hardware than I care to admit... but that "loving feeling" is fading quickly. Why, might you ask? I cant blame a company for embracing capitalism or for being in "the business to make money", but what I can do is criticize them for their anti-competitive practices, and dictator like control of the many products they offer.

Google - Obviously google is not without flaw, its painfully clear that many are afraid of having that much personal information aggregated in one place is a bad idea, and terrible for privacy. Google is clearly in the business to make money as well... and yet at least I get a refreshing feel from Google's business model. Google strives to deliver a quality product for a reasonable price. They embrace openness and giving the consumer choices... and appear to try and fix the many things that are broke in todays technology world.

Is it more important to have customer satisfaction and new customer growth because of word of mouth, and a good solid product, or to make an extra penny here and there and potentially sacrifice customer satisfaction.