The "companies can't accept free tech support, they need someone to blame," argument has been done to death, and I have trouble believing it. I know plenty of corporate IT people who rely on free IRC and email group support for both free and proprietary software.
I would never rely on google and IRC no matter how good they are (and I use them often) when the day is over I want someone way better than me who spends a solid 40 a week doing nothing but support. When I need Linux I buy RedHat if I wanted to run Asterisk I would go with Digium..
I agree with you on the tech support point: we're well into the process of switching our servers to FreeBSD and Linux running Samba and one of the requirements before committing to this process was that we be able to get tech support from somewhere besides google.
I still solve most problems with google, but if i ever get jammed up, it's nice to have something to fall back on, even if it is sort of admitting defeat when I use it.