4 ms·

Why has this gone on so long? Surely the optics are worse than the revenue at this point. “We hear you, we are canceling this, we deeply apologize,” blah blah.

falcor84 8y ago
I would assume that there are also very bad "optics" to an American conglomerate announcing to its government that they are unwilling to help with defense projects of (apparently) national interest.
- JMCQ87 8y ago
  With the current administration, maybe it won't just be optics, but also some knee-jerk executive orders that lead to much higher costs.
Eridrus 8y ago
This is the start of a play for the JEDI contract, which is estimated at $10bn over 2 years. This would make that one contract responsible for ~1/4 of all Google Cloud revenue. I also think that while there is a lot of gnashing of teeth, it's not really clear that the optics here matter. Amazon & Microsoft are already doing these sorts of projects with no backlash. This is really only a story because there are people inside Google speaking out. What's pretty clear from these threads is that people who are already dislike Google, dislike this too, but it's not clear that this is having an impact on people's opinions who otherwise have a positive image of Google.
- ggg9990 8y ago
  I’m talking about the optics to Google employees — I was not implying that they gave a crap about optics to the general public.
- MichaelMoser123 8y ago
  your mention of a big contract sounds true, also i somehow got the impression that we did not get all the details in this story. But then JEDI seems to be about creating a cloud for the DOD [1], whereas this contract seems to be about image recognition; but what do we know... But then: why didn't they create an alphabet company for military research ? (you can even call it Google Mars or Ares). Would have been more compartmentalized away from the rest of the company (that's how the military likes it). also interesting that this item seems to have disappeared from the front page - is this an editorial practice here with discussions that have gone 'bad'? (idea for a new application: track HN stories that have been on the front page but then disappeared from it). [1] https://fcw.com/articles/2018/03/07/cloud-jedi-dod-contract.aspx https://fcw.com/articles/2018/03/07/cloud-jedi-dod-contract....

falcor84 8y ago

I would assume that there are also very bad "optics" to an American conglomerate announcing to its government that they are unwilling to help with defense projects of (apparently) national interest.

JMCQ87 8y ago
With the current administration, maybe it won't just be optics, but also some knee-jerk executive orders that lead to much higher costs.

Eridrus 8y ago

This is the start of a play for the JEDI contract, which is estimated at $10bn over 2 years. This would make that one contract responsible for ~1/4 of all Google Cloud revenue. I also think that while there is a lot of gnashing of teeth, it's not really clear that the optics here matter. Amazon & Microsoft are already doing these sorts of projects with no backlash. This is really only a story because there are people inside Google speaking out. What's pretty clear from these threads is that people who are already dislike Google, dislike this too, but it's not clear that this is having an impact on people's opinions who otherwise have a positive image of Google.

ggg9990 8y ago
I’m talking about the optics to Google employees — I was not implying that they gave a crap about optics to the general public.
MichaelMoser123 8y ago
your mention of a big contract sounds true, also i somehow got the impression that we did not get all the details in this story. But then JEDI seems to be about creating a cloud for the DOD [1], whereas this contract seems to be about image recognition; but what do we know... But then: why didn't they create an alphabet company for military research ? (you can even call it Google Mars or Ares). Would have been more compartmentalized away from the rest of the company (that's how the military likes it). also interesting that this item seems to have disappeared from the front page - is this an editorial practice here with discussions that have gone 'bad'? (idea for a new application: track HN stories that have been on the front page but then disappeared from it). [1] https://fcw.com/articles/2018/03/07/cloud-jedi-dod-contract.aspx https://fcw.com/articles/2018/03/07/cloud-jedi-dod-contract....