Boy, some of you are wishin' and hopin' that all the bad in the world will go away just because you think it should be so. The purpose of a business is NOT to hire people, provide a product or service, and be philanthropic. The purpose of a business is to make money. Period. Companies who don't keep that in mind aren't companies for very long. If those other, secondary, aspects are met, then all the better.

Also, the Orbitz customers weren't charged more simply because they used a particular OS. From the editorial: "Instead, if an OSX user was detected, the order of search results was changed to show more expensive options first." The customer most definitely had the opportunity to search and do their due diligence before selecting the option that worked best for them. It's called targeted marketing, and every grocery store in the world does it. There's a reason why the milk (which people rush in to buy a lot) is way in the back to force you past all the other things you think you don't need. There's a reason why children's cereal is always on the lower two shelves. There's a reason why all those gossip magazines are in the checkout aisles. There's a reason most of the cars on a dealer's lot are loaded to the gills with options.

Marketers make assumptions about who is viewing their ads, displays and shelves all the time (performance tire ads on Speed Channel, safe-and-quiet tire ads on A&E) just to make you dig into that wallet on a regular basis. Orbitz isn't doing anything different. Should they be skewered for doing it? Only by people who didn't do their homework, and those should fall on deaf ears.