Yeah I agree. A smiley face just means "thanks" or "good", not "MUAHAHAHAAA". It doesn't mean this is all OK, but the article really goes over the top trying to drum up emotions (warning: the next email you're going to read will scar you for life and possibly kill you). It's almost cartoonish.

Steve Jobs's reply was almost cartoonish.

Exactly

To me it means, "I am pleased with the response"

One thing I've learned from email communication is that you can't grok the emotional response from text alone (even with emoticons)

This could be either a thankful smile, a loathful grin or anything in between.

It's not shocking to me because I'm not surprised at the behavior.

I would imagine that the person who was fired might disagree with you on the brutal part since Google's reaction was overblown. They could have simply told the person not to do it again. But they went with the instant firing without any second thought in an effort to keep Jobs happy.

The smiley face at the end is indicative of how happy Jobs was over how much power he had over them in that someone was fired over something he simply asked them to stop doing.

Smiling in the face of someone else's pain due to a career-ending mistake is close enough to the definition of "sadistic" as to make no difference.

Yeah, a lot of editorializing going on in that article. Better if you just read the emails.