Google threatening to relocate its business to a friendlier European state is probably enough to make Irish politicians crap themselves and change the law to suit Google.

You're kidding, right? There are no friendlier states.

Ireland does have low corporate tax rates, but that isn't enough for Google and other large companies (for example, my company's VMware purchases are bought on paper from an Irish subsidiary).

There's a technique called the double Irish Dutch sandwich which lets you create corporate structures resident in Ireland but Ireland considers them non-resident for tax purposes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

They were thinking they would rather work with a new company who has a product consumers want to buy instead of going down with a sinking ship that would bleed them dry on the way down.

If hostess can't properly market and sell products then they should go bankrupt.

I've seen this happen numerous times: a company starts doing poorly, they ask their employees to take cuts. The employees take cuts. The company keeps doing worse, the employees even sometimes start working for free "don't worry we'll turn this around soon." A few months later the company declares bankruptcy and everybody gets fired anyway and the company refuses back pay.

Hostess could have sold to another company which wanted to buy them but they said no. As the article mentions, Pringles was doing poorly, it sold off and now it's incredibly successful because it got new management and marketing.

I haven't eaten a hostess product in years. When I think hostess I think truck stop 10 year old Styrofoam. I can't remember the last time I saw someone eat a Hostess product. Cutting wages isn't going to help. The sooner its property and assets are sold off to someone who can either reinvigorate the brand or put its kitchens to better use the better imo.

It's a good thing they backed away. Anonymous usually attacks organizations that are somewhat bound by law and fear of PR disasters, so their retaliation is quite limited. Drug cartels care for neither of them. That's why being a reporter in Mexico is a very risky thing to do.

Had they gone ahead with their attacks, they could have unleashed hell for all bloggers in Mexico. A lot of blood could be in their hands.