system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How come nitrate is common but tetra-oxygen isn't?

Nitrate is NO3−, a nitrogen and 3 oxygens with an overall negative charge of -1. I always like to think of ions as the next element over when drawing lewis structures, makes it easier than thinking of them as an element + or - electrons. So I look at nitrogen and see that a nitrogen anion is pretty much the same as oxygen, electron-wise. So why is nitrate a super common compound, but tetra-oxygen is pretty much non-existent?


EDIT: Thanks for the answers, now I'm going to wikipedia all the concepts y'all mentioned.
gpt
Short version: You'd either have to have a quadruply bonded oxygen with a 2+ formal charge, or a oxygen with only six electrons on the periphery. None of these are good things. This would be a stupid reactive species.

O4 could be transiently formed by reacting ozone (O3) with atomic oxygen, but I'd expect it to either be linear or equilibrate rapidly between a linear and square structure. 

tl;dr Draw Lewis structures. Flinch in horror.