Google's infrastructure is almost all custom. There's a lot of people who would be out of a job if there was suddenly a >30% premium added to Google's infrastructure when compared to OEMs. If you want the laws to change, change the laws. The issue is the government, not the companies that are simply playing by the rules.
"Simply playing by the rules". No they aren't. They are paying a small fortune to figure out how to avoid paying taxes by following the letter of the law. However they break the spirit of the law, and hence are not playing by the rules.
This is not different from using drugs to win sports which hasn't yet been banned because it is too new. Strictly speaking it is legal, but it is both immoral and unethical.
The problem with depending on every possible behavior being described in the law and closing every loophole is that that would create a very draconian legal system nobody wants.
It is the same as with contracts between two parties. It is easy to screw each other over if one nitpicks about everything and don't follow the spirit of the contract. However the problem with such behavior is that it dramatically increases transaction costs, because one can not trust each other and have to make extremely complicated legal contracts.
I've noticed when dealing with American how the lack of any trust, makes any kind of business deal very expensive. Contracts are completely over the top.
I don't think this is how one wants society to develop. Parties in an economy have to be able to play fair with each other most of the time without resorting to ever more insane details and regulations.
I run a rental business and purposely purchase products that I need for personal use such that it can be deducted as a rental expense. As long as I use it >50% for rental stuff it's tax deductible.
Should I feel bad?
More specifically, does this violate the "spirit of the law?"
Even more specifically, every other rental owner does the same thing, so even if I change my behavior, I'm at a disadvantage with my competitors.
Again, your issues are with the government, not the companies that are following the law.
If I wrote a program with bugs in it and it returned unexpected and undesirable results, I couldn't reasonably say that the code breaks the spirit of my program. I simply wrote bad code and should fix it. I can no more expect a company of tens of thousands of individual to all perfectly adhere to some nebulous "spirit" than I can expect my computer to magically intuit my desires and do that rather than my actual mistaken request.
