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Most businesses focus on the business mission and suppress distractions from that mission. Debates about ethics, politics and public policy are seen as unwelcom

Most businesses focus on the business mission and suppress distractions from that mission. Debates about ethics, politics and public policy are seen as unwelcome distractions. But Google is a different kind of company. Google was founded on a set of ethical and moral principles that go beyond the immediate business mission. As described in the IPO founders' letter [0], their objective is to do "good things for the world even if we forgo short-term gains". You may be skeptical about this and see it as either naïveté or as a cynical ploy, but the drive to do the right thing independent from financial results is deeply ingrained in Google's culture. So it should be no surprise that there's constant and vigorous debate at Google about what's right and wrong. Seems to be working pretty well for them [1]. [0] https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/2004/ipo-letter.html https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/2004/ipo-letter.ht... [1] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4165541-alphabet-q1-2018-earnings-power-accelerating https://seekingalpha.com/article/4165541-alphabet-q1-2018-ea...

nlowell 9y ago
Google is not the only company that believes it has a moral compass or has a mission beyond profit.
- panarky 9y ago
  If you can find another company Google's size with a similar cultural drive to be a force for good in the world, you'll probably find their employees also have vigorous debates about what's right and wrong.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    Very few people think they are doing evil, most people think they are doing good. Humans first and foremost justify their actions. Google's overriding value is money. That's what they care about. If it wasn't that way they would operate differently. What it appears like is Google operates in a way that prioritizes money and then later justifies it with this notion of "doing good", but that's vague enough to literally mean anything. You think I'm exaggerating, but look at any number of organizations that have done things which nobody considers good and then look at how their members justify it. It always happens. How easy it to justify making 300k a year while pumping out walled garden mediocrity? It's really easy. Chiming in feels like sour grapes, but this notion that a massive corporation gives a fuck about anything but it's own existence doesn't seem realistic.
    - wpietri 9y ago
      Isn't that like saying that a person's overriding value is food because they spend so much time and money on it, eating repeatedly throughout the day? When instead that's more a necessity for doing anything else. I agree that Google cares about making money, because without it they wouldn't have a company. But isn't it strong to say their overriding value is money? Contrast them with, say, the pre-Google search companies. Google was able to kick their asses because Google ignored higher short-term revenue (e.g., display ads) and focused on generating much more search value. Look at GMail, which was a money-loser for years. Or all of their blue-sky projects, the canceling of which would immediately improve their profitability. This is not to say that they're all buttercups and moonbeams. But I think they could be much greedier, and much more awful.
      - hueving 9y ago
        >and focused on generating much more search value. That's just a competitive strategy any company takes to displace incumbents. Hardly a moral high ground.
        wpietri 9y ago
        I partly disagree, and I think you've created a false dichotomy. We can look at any economic activity through two lenses: "serves others" and "fills my pockets". The more companies focus only on the latter, the more they are scammy, extractive, or exploitative. The more companies focus on the former, the more value they create for their customers. But these things aren't mutually exclusive. They're independent. Companies that focus only on creating value while ignoring profit usually fail, as they aren't sustainable. Companies that focus only on profit usually fail, as customers realize they are getting taken for a ride. Some companies can do both well. I think Google is in that category. They create massive value without worrying too much about extracting every penny of cash. Which means that their overriding value isn't really money.
      - aaron-lebo 9y ago
        They have much more money than necessity. If we're talking about eating they are foodies that spend $200 at every meal and give the scraps to the homeless guy on the way out. It's not that they don't do good, but how do you quantify that even? The singular value that drives it (beyond the differing political values and the variety of tech they put out) is a desire to make money. What value does the organization have that is more central to that? If it was otherwise they wouldn't have hired a CFO who was in Wall Street at the height of its misbehavior. It's been nearly 20 years since Google was the little guy. They're a massive corporation and many people have come and gone. The only constant is the need to make stockholders happy. That might be cynical, but I just think it's realistic about how the modern world operates. They could be worse but they could also be much more and describing basic business behavior as "doing good" kind of dilutes the term and covers up what is really just a big corp being a big corp, the same way that MS's commercials with Common talking about "changing the world" is really just a way of selling stuff. It's a meaningless mantra.
  - qznc 9y ago
    I'm not sure. Bosch does fit the bill imho. It is mostly owned by a foundation [0] which tries "to be a force for good in the world". This global company has strong values [1] and 400k employees. I only joined it three months ago, but I already witnessed one case, where we denied a customer (car company) request because of end user security. It escalated quite a few levels up the management. On the other hand, Bosch had to pay a few millions in fines [2] recently. So you can as well argue that they are evil. Anyways, I don't see "vigorous debates" about moral issues as described in the article. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bosch_Stiftung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bosch_Stiftung [1] http://wearebosch.com http://wearebosch.com [2] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-962_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-962_en.htm
- vowelless 9y ago
  The fact that Google and employees at Google believe this is scary to me.
  - panarky 9y ago
    I strongly prefer a Google that tries to do the right thing to a Google that doesn't.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - smsm42 9y ago
      Depends on what they consider "the right thing" I guess. If that doesn't match what you consider the right thing you may want to change your preference :)
    - 80386 9y ago
      I strongly prefer a Google that focuses entirely on maximizing profit to a Google that tries to do the right thing -- for its definition of "the right thing", which includes things like giving a Google doodle to Yuri Kochiyama.
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
I want to point out that Larry Page himself thought advertising-funded search engines had an inherent conflict of interest, and that search needed to be in the realm of academia: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html (Appendix A) Amazingly, several billion dollars, and a few private yachts later, nobody at Google calls into question the fact that the company's very existence is unethical.
- eloff 9y ago
  Hardly unethical. If academia could produce a search engine of equal quality but without ads, people would use it. You may not like the ads, but they pay for the product. Which let's face it, is really quite good. There is probably no other software product I've been as loyal to for as long. Even linux, which is amazing, I haven't used for as long. I started out on Windows. I almost always find what I'm looking for on the first page of Google results, if it's to be found at all. That's remarkable when you think of how much information is out there.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    I believe it could or it could produce something of similar quality, but the incentives aren't there. You can spend years in academia trying to build something like that or you can just go to Google and mmake bank. It's an easy choice. That doesn't mean it's not possible, it is just that our incentives are distorted.
  - rhizome 9y ago
    If academia could produce a search engine of equal quality but without ads, people would use it. Well...but it did, and they did. But you (and Larry Page) raise a good question: is it necessary for web search to be profitable?
    - drivingmenuts 9y ago
      > is it necessary for web search to be profitable? Well, then you got two choices: run by a non-profit or run by the government. The first one is unsustainable and the second one ... well, that would turn into even worse politics. Can you say "Welcome to TrumpSearch" or "Welcome to SearchHill"? Every four/eight years the search database would be completely upended/suppressed/repressed/uplifted to reflect current political thinking, favoritism, lobbying, fears, hopes, hatred, etc. It would make gerrymandering look paltry. Even worse because you couldn't guarantee that the politicians in charge would be competent to understand a spreadsheet, much less a search engine.
roenxi 9y ago
> Donations by its employees to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign outnumbered contributions to President Trump’s campaign 62 to 1 Trump isn't the most popular presidential candidate in recent history, but there does seem to be a left-wing bias at Google. Being left wing is clearly different from doing "good things for the world even if we forgo short-term gains". Neither wing of politics has a particular claim to being more moral; and both left and right wing philosophies have seen great success stories and great tragedies when they are in the ascendant. If the politics of Google is that biased from the mainstream (which, I remind you, is about a 50-50 split, not plausibly as extreme as 80-20) then there is a risk that their data and power will be used for political ends. The half of America that votes republican should not be sleeping easily on this one.
- turndown 9y ago
  This seems to be almost completely irrelevant to what is being discussed here - you yourself admit the point you are raising has no particular impact on the morality of there actions. Also, it is not accurate to say that politics in the US are split 50/50. It is more like closer to 40/30/30[1] 1. http://news.gallup.com/poll/180440/new-record-political-independents.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/180440/new-record-political-inde...
  - roenxi 9y ago
    It is extremely relevant; the original article is literally titled "Google vs. Google: How Nonstop Political Arguments Rule Its Workplace". The thread started with an observation that deciding what is right and wrong is fundamentally a question of "ethics, politics and public policy". If Google is going to be seen as a politically active entity, aligned with the left, then that is a problem. Particularly because aligning with one wing, with high probability, means that Google isn't going to be focused on the good deeds part of politics but on the political campaigning part of politics. That should honestly be a worry to everyone, but particularly the political right. Also 40/30/30 isn't even close to a figure like 61-1. Even if Google were leaning 40/40/20 it would still be markedly biased. I'm from Australia where voting is compulsory, and the undecided 40% usually splits about 20%-20% both ways when made to decide. EDIT I looked it up for your interest ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_federal_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_federal_ele... ) - our most decisive federal-level election was 41.5% to 58.5% on a rough left-right split, aka 2-party-preferred, back in 1931. 55% to 45% would be a landslide in a modern election. America will be different, but realistically I doubt the split would be as bad as 65-35. Probably more like 55-45.
Inconel 9y ago
I'm not asking this to be snarky, but for anyone who might be privy to these discussions, is there constant and vigorous debate within Google about the ethics of targeted advertising, media/tech consolidation, and other ethically ambiguous drivers of revenue?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- victoriasun 9y ago
  I was an Ads PM at Google several years ago. While there are many reasons I personally disliked working there, how Google handles the ethical concern of advertising and Search is not one of them. Google cares about being Search first. Ads are seen as a happy side effect of being able to fully and correctly answer a user's question. Search is often used with commercial intent, after all. One piece of thing most people don't realise is that showing an ad doesn't make Google money. In fact, showing an ad that doesn't convert into a purchase can often lose Google money by depressing the value of an impression. So Google invests a lot in the "targeted" part of the advertising, and making sure that the ad actually provides value.
  - dleslie 9y ago
    That's an interesting way of stating that Google goes through great effort to discover how best to convince a user to click on an ad.
  - danmaz74 9y ago
    A long time ago, ads on google search were clearly distinct from organic results. Nowadays, they're mixed so well that only those who know they should check for the difference notice it. I particularly don't like when the first result is the paid result from company X, and the second result is the organic result of company X, which is only paying to outbid competitors that could appear as #1 when people search for "X". I'll use very strong words here, but that paid ad for me is not different from "protection money" you pay to a racket so they ensure nothing bad happens to your business. It's highly unethical, but, I'm sure, incredibly profitable: in these cases I make the conscious choice to click the organic result, and NOT the paid one, but I'm pretty sure I'm one in 100. So, I don't doubt that there are ethical debates inside Google, but it's clear that, the more it becomes just another public company for which the overriding concern can only be increasing shareholder value, the less any ethical consideration that has an impact on the bottom line can have an effect.
gnarbarian 9y ago
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -CS Lewis Politics/religion and business don't mix, you will alienate half your potential audience and piss off your employees. When was the last time your car insurance company imposed a political opinion on you? With the power that Google has as a conduit for information, having any sort of political bias in presenting information is frighteningly Orwellian. Their recent egregious transgressions has caused me to avoid their products wherever possible. The most ironic thing IMO is their willingness to neuter one of the most amazing free speech platforms that has ever been created, YouTube. I've switched off their search engine and now primarily use duckduckgo and bing. I'm also using the brave browser. I am distancing myself from that company as fast as alternatives present themselves.
- ojbyrne 9y ago
  “Half” is a joke. If you look at the entire market (i.e the entire world) that Google is addressing, the segment of American Republicans who support gun rights and are concerned about equal time for the extreme right wing is vanishingly small.
  - gnarbarian 9y ago
    About half of Americans are right of center. What I'm saying is EVERY political stance google takes alienates a segment of their customers and employees. This includes stances which alienate left leaning people too. Does anyone remember that the YouTube shooter was a PETA activist who was enraged over the demonetization and de-circulation of her videos?
    - r00fus 9y ago
      right != extreme right. That the overton window has shifted doesn't mean what's on display is just "right wing" - it's extreme. So what is "center" anyways? The single-axis political scale is a very flawed way of looking at
rasz 9y ago
>Google was founded on a set of ethical and moral principles is that what you call Pentagon funded military research (DLI, NSA and CIA under MDDS) ?
- paul7986 9y ago
  So is flying to Silicon Valley per an invite from Google regarding your blood/sweat/tears/dreams to discuss supposedly buying your app/technology only to then be baited by them in the meeting for your secret sauce which you divulge because this is your dream ... once divulged they kick you out and say the race is on. Is that ethical... moral... just? That's what happened to me in April 2013 when I was invited and met with Motorola/Google ATAP(https://ryanspahn.com/my-google-NDA-experience.html https://ryanspahn.com/my-google-NDA-experience.html) re: my dream/blood/sweat/tears. Also they recently were awarded a patent for the exact same thing I created/met them about(https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/google-patent-speaker-m... https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/google-patent-speaker-m...). Don't be evil ... HA
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    While I sympathize with your concern, and agree with you, pasting the same comment repeatedly in a thread is likely to get you slapped by the admins. They don't like it, and most of us need not read the same comment three or more times.
  - edejong 9y ago
    Link doesn’t work. Anyways: is it evil to teach something about intellectual property? You failed to properly prepare the meeting, hire a lawyer and patent your invention. What exactly did you think you were selling to them? Don’t be evil doesn’t entail: don’t conduct proper business.
    - talmand 9y ago
      I think I would disagree with the notion of teaching about intellectual property by stealing somebody's intellectual property. For a company to publicly express "we are about doing the right thing", I would hope that wouldn't include conducting "proper business" of taking advantage of people. I would think "doing the right thing" would more along the lines of "great idea you have there, let's help you get that patent and work together to get it market".
AmericanChopper 9y ago
Very rigorous as long as it doesn’t stray beyond the narrow-minded politics of Silicon Valley.
paul7986 9y ago
So is flying to Silicon Valley per an invite from Google regarding your blood/sweat/tears/dreams to discuss supposedly buying your app/technology only to then be baited by them in the meeting for your secret sauce which you divulge because this is your dream ... once divulged they kick you out and say the race is on. Is that ethical... moral... just? That's what happened to me in April 2013 when I was invited and met with Motorola/Google ATAP(https://ryanspahn.com/my-google-NDA-experience.html https://ryanspahn.com/my-google-NDA-experience.html) re: my dream/blood/sweat/tears. Also they recently were awarded a patent for the exact same thing I created/met them about(https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/google-patent-speaker-m... https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/google-patent-speaker-m...). Don't be evil ... HA
- skavi 9y ago
  Your blog says they decided not to use the tech after talking to you… Also could you link the patent? The above link is dead.
  - swampthinker 9y ago
    Think this was the link: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/google-patent-speaker-mesh-network/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/google-patent-speaker-m... Edit: after reading the article I have very little sympathy for OP. Samsung clearly developed their technology without you, and Google was rewarded a patent 5 years after meeting you. Which likely means you didn't even file an affordable provisional patent.
    - paul7986 9y ago
      No we filed our provisional before the meeting and later filed our non provisional that is slowly making its way thru the patent office due to resources.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - 9y ago
pdonis 9y ago
> Google was founded on a set of ethical and moral principles that go beyond the immediate business mission. Those would be the ethical and moral principles that Google has since broken? > As described in the IPO founders' letter [0], their objective is to do "good things for the world even if we forgo short-term gains". Which apparently includes: entrenching the ad-supported business model regardless of the damage it does; killing apps that were extremely popular with and beneficial to users, because they weren't generating enough ad revenue; locking people into walled gardens; etc. > the drive to do the right thing independent from financial results is deeply ingrained in Google's culture. Is it? Because it's sure hard to tell from the user's perspective. > Seems to be working pretty well for them For those who are benefiting from Google's profits and stock price, sure. But doing good for the world?
smsm42 9y ago
> their objective is to do "good things for the world" And if some people disagree that what Google is doing are "good things", too bad for them. Also, they are so fired. > see it as either naïveté or as a cynical ploy I see it as intolerance and blindness to even a possibility of one's position being wrong or incomplete. If you define what you are doing as "good thing", then automatically everybody who disagrees is "bad", and what shouldn't you do to not allow bad persons to ruin a good thing? > Seems to be working pretty well for them Except those who get disinvited, or not hired, or fired, for taking a wrong side (which is, any side that somebody in power disagrees with) in the debate. But yeah, they are making a boatload of money, so I guess that's a "good thing" too.
finnthehuman 9y ago
>the drive to do the right thing independent from financial results is deeply ingrained in Google's culture. That's the most highbrow way I've ever heard to describe googlers arguing internally about the day's hot button political issues while turning a blind eye to the ethical monsters in their own basement.
samnwa 9y ago
Vigorous discussion and then firing if you're on the wrong side of the discussion like what happened to James Damore?

nlowell 9y ago

Google is not the only company that believes it has a moral compass or has a mission beyond profit.

panarky 9y ago
If you can find another company Google's size with a similar cultural drive to be a force for good in the world, you'll probably find their employees also have vigorous debates about what's right and wrong.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  Very few people think they are doing evil, most people think they are doing good. Humans first and foremost justify their actions. Google's overriding value is money. That's what they care about. If it wasn't that way they would operate differently. What it appears like is Google operates in a way that prioritizes money and then later justifies it with this notion of "doing good", but that's vague enough to literally mean anything. You think I'm exaggerating, but look at any number of organizations that have done things which nobody considers good and then look at how their members justify it. It always happens. How easy it to justify making 300k a year while pumping out walled garden mediocrity? It's really easy. Chiming in feels like sour grapes, but this notion that a massive corporation gives a fuck about anything but it's own existence doesn't seem realistic.
  - wpietri 9y ago
    Isn't that like saying that a person's overriding value is food because they spend so much time and money on it, eating repeatedly throughout the day? When instead that's more a necessity for doing anything else. I agree that Google cares about making money, because without it they wouldn't have a company. But isn't it strong to say their overriding value is money? Contrast them with, say, the pre-Google search companies. Google was able to kick their asses because Google ignored higher short-term revenue (e.g., display ads) and focused on generating much more search value. Look at GMail, which was a money-loser for years. Or all of their blue-sky projects, the canceling of which would immediately improve their profitability. This is not to say that they're all buttercups and moonbeams. But I think they could be much greedier, and much more awful.
    - hueving 9y ago
      >and focused on generating much more search value. That's just a competitive strategy any company takes to displace incumbents. Hardly a moral high ground.
      - wpietri 9y ago
        I partly disagree, and I think you've created a false dichotomy. We can look at any economic activity through two lenses: "serves others" and "fills my pockets". The more companies focus only on the latter, the more they are scammy, extractive, or exploitative. The more companies focus on the former, the more value they create for their customers. But these things aren't mutually exclusive. They're independent. Companies that focus only on creating value while ignoring profit usually fail, as they aren't sustainable. Companies that focus only on profit usually fail, as customers realize they are getting taken for a ride. Some companies can do both well. I think Google is in that category. They create massive value without worrying too much about extracting every penny of cash. Which means that their overriding value isn't really money.
    - aaron-lebo 9y ago
      They have much more money than necessity. If we're talking about eating they are foodies that spend $200 at every meal and give the scraps to the homeless guy on the way out. It's not that they don't do good, but how do you quantify that even? The singular value that drives it (beyond the differing political values and the variety of tech they put out) is a desire to make money. What value does the organization have that is more central to that? If it was otherwise they wouldn't have hired a CFO who was in Wall Street at the height of its misbehavior. It's been nearly 20 years since Google was the little guy. They're a massive corporation and many people have come and gone. The only constant is the need to make stockholders happy. That might be cynical, but I just think it's realistic about how the modern world operates. They could be worse but they could also be much more and describing basic business behavior as "doing good" kind of dilutes the term and covers up what is really just a big corp being a big corp, the same way that MS's commercials with Common talking about "changing the world" is really just a way of selling stuff. It's a meaningless mantra.
- qznc 9y ago
  I'm not sure. Bosch does fit the bill imho. It is mostly owned by a foundation [0] which tries "to be a force for good in the world". This global company has strong values [1] and 400k employees. I only joined it three months ago, but I already witnessed one case, where we denied a customer (car company) request because of end user security. It escalated quite a few levels up the management. On the other hand, Bosch had to pay a few millions in fines [2] recently. So you can as well argue that they are evil. Anyways, I don't see "vigorous debates" about moral issues as described in the article. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bosch_Stiftung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bosch_Stiftung [1] http://wearebosch.com http://wearebosch.com [2] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-962_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-962_en.htm
vowelless 9y ago
The fact that Google and employees at Google believe this is scary to me.
- panarky 9y ago
  I strongly prefer a Google that tries to do the right thing to a Google that doesn't.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - smsm42 9y ago
    Depends on what they consider "the right thing" I guess. If that doesn't match what you consider the right thing you may want to change your preference :)
  - 80386 9y ago
    I strongly prefer a Google that focuses entirely on maximizing profit to a Google that tries to do the right thing -- for its definition of "the right thing", which includes things like giving a Google doodle to Yuri Kochiyama.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

I want to point out that Larry Page himself thought advertising-funded search engines had an inherent conflict of interest, and that search needed to be in the realm of academia: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html (Appendix A) Amazingly, several billion dollars, and a few private yachts later, nobody at Google calls into question the fact that the company's very existence is unethical.

eloff 9y ago
Hardly unethical. If academia could produce a search engine of equal quality but without ads, people would use it. You may not like the ads, but they pay for the product. Which let's face it, is really quite good. There is probably no other software product I've been as loyal to for as long. Even linux, which is amazing, I haven't used for as long. I started out on Windows. I almost always find what I'm looking for on the first page of Google results, if it's to be found at all. That's remarkable when you think of how much information is out there.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  I believe it could or it could produce something of similar quality, but the incentives aren't there. You can spend years in academia trying to build something like that or you can just go to Google and mmake bank. It's an easy choice. That doesn't mean it's not possible, it is just that our incentives are distorted.
- rhizome 9y ago
  If academia could produce a search engine of equal quality but without ads, people would use it. Well...but it did, and they did. But you (and Larry Page) raise a good question: is it necessary for web search to be profitable?
  - drivingmenuts 9y ago
    > is it necessary for web search to be profitable? Well, then you got two choices: run by a non-profit or run by the government. The first one is unsustainable and the second one ... well, that would turn into even worse politics. Can you say "Welcome to TrumpSearch" or "Welcome to SearchHill"? Every four/eight years the search database would be completely upended/suppressed/repressed/uplifted to reflect current political thinking, favoritism, lobbying, fears, hopes, hatred, etc. It would make gerrymandering look paltry. Even worse because you couldn't guarantee that the politicians in charge would be competent to understand a spreadsheet, much less a search engine.

roenxi 9y ago

> Donations by its employees to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign outnumbered contributions to President Trump’s campaign 62 to 1 Trump isn't the most popular presidential candidate in recent history, but there does seem to be a left-wing bias at Google. Being left wing is clearly different from doing "good things for the world even if we forgo short-term gains". Neither wing of politics has a particular claim to being more moral; and both left and right wing philosophies have seen great success stories and great tragedies when they are in the ascendant. If the politics of Google is that biased from the mainstream (which, I remind you, is about a 50-50 split, not plausibly as extreme as 80-20) then there is a risk that their data and power will be used for political ends. The half of America that votes republican should not be sleeping easily on this one.

turndown 9y ago
This seems to be almost completely irrelevant to what is being discussed here - you yourself admit the point you are raising has no particular impact on the morality of there actions. Also, it is not accurate to say that politics in the US are split 50/50. It is more like closer to 40/30/30[1] 1. http://news.gallup.com/poll/180440/new-record-political-independents.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/180440/new-record-political-inde...
- roenxi 9y ago
  It is extremely relevant; the original article is literally titled "Google vs. Google: How Nonstop Political Arguments Rule Its Workplace". The thread started with an observation that deciding what is right and wrong is fundamentally a question of "ethics, politics and public policy". If Google is going to be seen as a politically active entity, aligned with the left, then that is a problem. Particularly because aligning with one wing, with high probability, means that Google isn't going to be focused on the good deeds part of politics but on the political campaigning part of politics. That should honestly be a worry to everyone, but particularly the political right. Also 40/30/30 isn't even close to a figure like 61-1. Even if Google were leaning 40/40/20 it would still be markedly biased. I'm from Australia where voting is compulsory, and the undecided 40% usually splits about 20%-20% both ways when made to decide. EDIT I looked it up for your interest ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_federal_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_federal_ele... ) - our most decisive federal-level election was 41.5% to 58.5% on a rough left-right split, aka 2-party-preferred, back in 1931. 55% to 45% would be a landslide in a modern election. America will be different, but realistically I doubt the split would be as bad as 65-35. Probably more like 55-45.

Inconel 9y ago

I'm not asking this to be snarky, but for anyone who might be privy to these discussions, is there constant and vigorous debate within Google about the ethics of targeted advertising, media/tech consolidation, and other ethically ambiguous drivers of revenue?

deleted 9y ago
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victoriasun 9y ago
I was an Ads PM at Google several years ago. While there are many reasons I personally disliked working there, how Google handles the ethical concern of advertising and Search is not one of them. Google cares about being Search first. Ads are seen as a happy side effect of being able to fully and correctly answer a user's question. Search is often used with commercial intent, after all. One piece of thing most people don't realise is that showing an ad doesn't make Google money. In fact, showing an ad that doesn't convert into a purchase can often lose Google money by depressing the value of an impression. So Google invests a lot in the "targeted" part of the advertising, and making sure that the ad actually provides value.
- dleslie 9y ago
  That's an interesting way of stating that Google goes through great effort to discover how best to convince a user to click on an ad.
- danmaz74 9y ago
  A long time ago, ads on google search were clearly distinct from organic results. Nowadays, they're mixed so well that only those who know they should check for the difference notice it. I particularly don't like when the first result is the paid result from company X, and the second result is the organic result of company X, which is only paying to outbid competitors that could appear as #1 when people search for "X". I'll use very strong words here, but that paid ad for me is not different from "protection money" you pay to a racket so they ensure nothing bad happens to your business. It's highly unethical, but, I'm sure, incredibly profitable: in these cases I make the conscious choice to click the organic result, and NOT the paid one, but I'm pretty sure I'm one in 100. So, I don't doubt that there are ethical debates inside Google, but it's clear that, the more it becomes just another public company for which the overriding concern can only be increasing shareholder value, the less any ethical consideration that has an impact on the bottom line can have an effect.

gnarbarian 9y ago

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -CS Lewis Politics/religion and business don't mix, you will alienate half your potential audience and piss off your employees. When was the last time your car insurance company imposed a political opinion on you? With the power that Google has as a conduit for information, having any sort of political bias in presenting information is frighteningly Orwellian. Their recent egregious transgressions has caused me to avoid their products wherever possible. The most ironic thing IMO is their willingness to neuter one of the most amazing free speech platforms that has ever been created, YouTube. I've switched off their search engine and now primarily use duckduckgo and bing. I'm also using the brave browser. I am distancing myself from that company as fast as alternatives present themselves.

ojbyrne 9y ago
“Half” is a joke. If you look at the entire market (i.e the entire world) that Google is addressing, the segment of American Republicans who support gun rights and are concerned about equal time for the extreme right wing is vanishingly small.
- gnarbarian 9y ago
  About half of Americans are right of center. What I'm saying is EVERY political stance google takes alienates a segment of their customers and employees. This includes stances which alienate left leaning people too. Does anyone remember that the YouTube shooter was a PETA activist who was enraged over the demonetization and de-circulation of her videos?
  - r00fus 9y ago
    right != extreme right. That the overton window has shifted doesn't mean what's on display is just "right wing" - it's extreme. So what is "center" anyways? The single-axis political scale is a very flawed way of looking at

rasz 9y ago

>Google was founded on a set of ethical and moral principles is that what you call Pentagon funded military research (DLI, NSA and CIA under MDDS) ?

paul7986 9y ago
So is flying to Silicon Valley per an invite from Google regarding your blood/sweat/tears/dreams to discuss supposedly buying your app/technology only to then be baited by them in the meeting for your secret sauce which you divulge because this is your dream ... once divulged they kick you out and say the race is on. Is that ethical... moral... just? That's what happened to me in April 2013 when I was invited and met with Motorola/Google ATAP(https://ryanspahn.com/my-google-NDA-experience.html https://ryanspahn.com/my-google-NDA-experience.html) re: my dream/blood/sweat/tears. Also they recently were awarded a patent for the exact same thing I created/met them about(https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/google-patent-speaker-m... https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/google-patent-speaker-m...). Don't be evil ... HA
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  While I sympathize with your concern, and agree with you, pasting the same comment repeatedly in a thread is likely to get you slapped by the admins. They don't like it, and most of us need not read the same comment three or more times.
- edejong 9y ago
  Link doesn’t work. Anyways: is it evil to teach something about intellectual property? You failed to properly prepare the meeting, hire a lawyer and patent your invention. What exactly did you think you were selling to them? Don’t be evil doesn’t entail: don’t conduct proper business.
  - talmand 9y ago
    I think I would disagree with the notion of teaching about intellectual property by stealing somebody's intellectual property. For a company to publicly express "we are about doing the right thing", I would hope that wouldn't include conducting "proper business" of taking advantage of people. I would think "doing the right thing" would more along the lines of "great idea you have there, let's help you get that patent and work together to get it market".

AmericanChopper 9y ago

Very rigorous as long as it doesn’t stray beyond the narrow-minded politics of Silicon Valley.

paul7986 9y ago

So is flying to Silicon Valley per an invite from Google regarding your blood/sweat/tears/dreams to discuss supposedly buying your app/technology only to then be baited by them in the meeting for your secret sauce which you divulge because this is your dream ... once divulged they kick you out and say the race is on. Is that ethical... moral... just? That's what happened to me in April 2013 when I was invited and met with Motorola/Google ATAP(https://ryanspahn.com/my-google-NDA-experience.html https://ryanspahn.com/my-google-NDA-experience.html) re: my dream/blood/sweat/tears. Also they recently were awarded a patent for the exact same thing I created/met them about(https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/google-patent-speaker-m... https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/google-patent-speaker-m...). Don't be evil ... HA

skavi 9y ago
Your blog says they decided not to use the tech after talking to you… Also could you link the patent? The above link is dead.
- swampthinker 9y ago
  Think this was the link: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/google-patent-speaker-mesh-network/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/google-patent-speaker-m... Edit: after reading the article I have very little sympathy for OP. Samsung clearly developed their technology without you, and Google was rewarded a patent 5 years after meeting you. Which likely means you didn't even file an affordable provisional patent.
  - paul7986 9y ago
    No we filed our provisional before the meeting and later filed our non provisional that is slowly making its way thru the patent office due to resources.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- 9y ago

pdonis 9y ago

> Google was founded on a set of ethical and moral principles that go beyond the immediate business mission. Those would be the ethical and moral principles that Google has since broken? > As described in the IPO founders' letter [0], their objective is to do "good things for the world even if we forgo short-term gains". Which apparently includes: entrenching the ad-supported business model regardless of the damage it does; killing apps that were extremely popular with and beneficial to users, because they weren't generating enough ad revenue; locking people into walled gardens; etc. > the drive to do the right thing independent from financial results is deeply ingrained in Google's culture. Is it? Because it's sure hard to tell from the user's perspective. > Seems to be working pretty well for them For those who are benefiting from Google's profits and stock price, sure. But doing good for the world?

smsm42 9y ago

> their objective is to do "good things for the world" And if some people disagree that what Google is doing are "good things", too bad for them. Also, they are so fired. > see it as either naïveté or as a cynical ploy I see it as intolerance and blindness to even a possibility of one's position being wrong or incomplete. If you define what you are doing as "good thing", then automatically everybody who disagrees is "bad", and what shouldn't you do to not allow bad persons to ruin a good thing? > Seems to be working pretty well for them Except those who get disinvited, or not hired, or fired, for taking a wrong side (which is, any side that somebody in power disagrees with) in the debate. But yeah, they are making a boatload of money, so I guess that's a "good thing" too.

finnthehuman 9y ago

>the drive to do the right thing independent from financial results is deeply ingrained in Google's culture. That's the most highbrow way I've ever heard to describe googlers arguing internally about the day's hot button political issues while turning a blind eye to the ethical monsters in their own basement.

samnwa 9y ago

Vigorous discussion and then firing if you're on the wrong side of the discussion like what happened to James Damore?