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Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

• TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
  IMO, the link should be updated to point to the original source. The Verge article adds no value to the discussion: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/ https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-googl...
  • Domenic_S 8y ago
    Fair, I just posted the link I originally saw. And I can't update myself. Mods, feel free..
  • jsoc815 8y ago
    Don't think it's allowed. I just tried to post it only to learn that someone else also tried; post is dead. Not surprised, but think it's a little weird because the leaking of the video seems like a point for discussion of something happening in the company, SV, etc., maybe? Maybe Dang (or someone other minder) will be kind enough to explain.
    • itbeho 8y ago
      It’s worthy of a discussion in my mind. There are a few articles in the news this week about Google trying to influence the election in Clinton’s favor. And yet she still lost. Perhaps Google isn’t as influential as they think? That being said, Google executives are not elected representatives of the American people and they subvert the voter’s will at the risk of regulation that will likely be worse for them and their customers.
      • dragonwriter 8y ago
        > That being said, Google executives are not elected representatives of the American people and they subvert the voter’s will at the risk of regulation that will likely be worse for them and their customers. Google executives and Google as such have the Constitutionally protected right to attempt to influence elections by lawful means, and regulatory retaliation for such activism is exactly what the First Amendment exists to protect against. (It's kind of ironic that the people arguing that Google should be regulated for advocating against the current administration and the Party behind it often think that the rules preventing churches from retaining their tax-code subsidy while actively campaigning for candidates should be abolished, as they assume those would be likely, on balance, to advocate for that party.)
    • dang 8y ago
      That site has been banned on HN for years. We're happy to make exceptions for specific cases where there's a substantive post, though, like this one.
      • jsoc815 8y ago
        Ah, thanks for explaining.
      • savethefuture 8y ago
        Good exception. Off-topic: Is there a list of banned websites and is it public?
        • dang 8y ago
          Yes. Well, a hashtable. It's not public, but it wouldn't be hard to approximate from public data.
          • shmulkey18 8y ago
            > It's not public Why not?
            • deleted 8y ago
              [deleted]
      • ihatethem 8y ago
        I don't see how private citizens discussing their political views is "substantive", there is nothing remotely controversial in that footage, this is just fodder for partisans.
        • dang 8y ago
          You've repeatedly created accounts with a propaganda agenda for Google. You've been doing it for years. We've banned you before, and I've banned this account. Doing this is abusive regardless of what company you're promoting or what your motive is. Would you please stop? HN is for curious humans to exchange thoughts in community. Few things undermine curiosity or community more. We frequently ask users not to accuse each other of astroturfing or shilling without evidence, but when we do find evidence—and there's a lot of it in this case—we go from tolerant to severe pretty quickly. (All: this is not about the thread topic, politics, or Google in general—only a malignant kind of forum abuse. I hesitate to post it in an already-controversial thread, but the data are so clear that I decided not to wait.)
  • dang 8y ago
    OK, we changed to that from https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17852502/breitbart-google-all-hands-meeting-the-2016-election-leaked-video-alphabet https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17852502/breitbart-google....
• tcbawo 8y ago
  Is it really surprising that a multinational company would have a preferred candidate? Although, I'm sure they lobbied extensively for all major candidates. It is interesting that both major parties seem to want to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to free speech, "common carrier", and antitrust issues.
  • ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    Corporations seem like they have a comical level of hypocrisy, until you realize that corporations are in it for the money, and will almost always take the most profitable position for them in any given debate. For instance, you will see strong calls to regulate businesses they have to interact with, while actively fighting against regulation of themselves, even on the same issues.
    • rsj_hn 8y ago
      Yes, corporations are in it for the money, and they are hypocrites, etc. I don't think most people have a problem with that (except maybe those who think corporations are moral agents), but what's been happening recently is very concerning: 1. Corporations, always wanting to appeal to younger voters because brand loyalty is sticky, naturally try to position themselves externally as hip/woke/whatever. That means espousing whatever cool urban cause is hot right now, like Nike supporting Kaepernick to whitewash their labor and environmental record while appealing to urban trendsetters, or cosmetic companies parading around 12 year old transgender models to show how leading edge they are. That's not a big deal by itself, as Nike gonna Nike and everyone wants to position themselves as a trend-setting lifestyle brand. 2. Tech companies, in particular, needing to appeal to a tight labor market for young programmers, feel a need to make more internal concessions to the politics that young programmers have, creating a woke monoculture in many places. No, they're not gonna budge on stuff like paying taxes, but they are happy to no-platform someone who is, say, pro-life, or uses the term "illegal immigrant" instead of "undocumented american", or someone who points out the real risks of giving mastectomies to pre-teens or even medical castration of young boys suffering from gender dysphoria. OK, a bit creepy, but the republic will survive (although some of the kids are going to have a hard time). 3. The same companies are now effective monopolies in large online spaces (Facebook, twitter), online marketplaces (Amazon), and online information dissemination (Google). Uh oh. Combine 1,2,3 and you have a real threat to Free Speech. If you say the wrong thing, you might get booted from huge public marketplaces. If you only had 1, 2, you could always find some competing brand and there wouldn't be a monoculture. If you only had 3, then you might expect, say Google, to skew information about H1-B visas or whatever narrow economic interests it cares about, which while bad for the public discourse, isn't an all encompassing, stifling thing. But the combination of all 3 poses really big problems for creating space for dissenting views and having those views heard. The closest analogy I can think of would the 1950s chill, in which a few large conglomerates were working hand in glove to suppress communist/leftist views. That was the era of Chomsky and Hermann's "Manufacturing Consent", where leftist positions were thrown into the memory hole and only lived in fringe spaces, like random anarchist bookstores and tiny meetups. They were completely shut out of the public dialogue and policy making process. Blacklists circulated of who you shouldn't hire, and there was consensus on what you shouldn't report. It was a bad time, and led to some very, very bad decisions, such as the Vietnam war, war on drugs, and rollback of some important new deal protections. I'm not looking forward to the new circulation of blacklists and the cheering that is happening to the new chill in public discourse. Now we see a similar monoculture forming that is trying to stifle what are basically traditional conservative cultural views -- views that were basically mandatory in the 50s are forbidden today -- while you still have the right wing views about economic organization in place -- and this is also going to lead to some very bad decisions. At least no one has won a total victory, and so you see leftist business openly weeping at government election results, not because they are sad about all the tax cuts, extension of IP protections, and further erosion of anti-trust, which they knew they would get, but because it offends the cultural left who they need to cater to as their employees and young urban customers. But if you look at a scatterplot of where people fall, the biggest group is the cultural conservative/economically liberal group. Although it's trendy to say you are an economic conservative and cultural liberal, fewer people inhabit that space. So we are in a situation in which the maximum number of people are being excluded from the public discourse. Even if you don't agree with this group, if there is still some shred of shared loyalty for your fellows, you don't want to see the majority of the nation excluded from our new monoculture. It's a great time for tax cuts, but not a good time for free speech and we are gonna make some colossally terrible decisions as a result of this exclusion, together with radicalizing a large section of the population.
• liftbigweights 8y ago
  I see an hour old post on the frontpage with 6 votes. This story has more votes in less time and is not on the frontpage. I think this is a far more important news story than "The Known Known". Edit) So this tech related story is off-topic but the "known known" an explicitly political and off-topic post is not.
  • dragonwriter 8y ago
    > This story has more votes in less time and is not on the frontpage And probably more flags. > I think this is a far more important news story than "The Known Known". It's also a very likely to be seen as an off-topic political story.
  • jarsin 8y ago
    I submitted this way earlier today and got some message from the site I had never seen before that it was already submitted but it did not show it to me like it usually does, and it was nowhere to be found. I think this guy got it through because he did not use the original Breitbart link. My recent fox story about google got the silent ban as well.
    • ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      You can turn your "show dead" setting in your profile to "yes" to see these. Some domains are automatically marked dead on submission, usually sites with a strong bias or who rarely break their own news. As dang noted elsewhere in this thread, this story is notable and worth sharing, so it's a worthy exception. Users with enough karma can vouch for dead stories as well and make them visible, but since the dead pile is super spammy, most users don't bother to look in there.
• mrschwabe 8y ago
  For additional context, also note Eric Schmidt's consultant role which was revealed in HRC's leaked emails: https://qz.com/823922/eric-schmidt-played-a-crucial-role-in-team-hillarys-election-tech/ https://qz.com/823922/eric-schmidt-played-a-crucial-role-in-... https://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-emails-google-eric-schmidt-relationship-with-clintons-2016-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-emails-google-eric... https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/37262 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/37262
  • mikeyouse 8y ago
    There was essentially no new news in the hacked emails -- People had been reporting for years that Schmidt was supporting HRC's presidential bid, including forming a startup to help her with engineering talent: https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working-for-hillary-clinton-campaign/ https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-workin...
    • akhilcacharya 8y ago
      He’s been a notable Democratic donor for a while - he even invited Obama to a talk at Google and asked him about how to sort a billion integers.
      • lamarpye 8y ago
        I have meet people that believe Obama knew how to do it.
    • mrschwabe 8y ago
      Well it is a confirmation a paid arrangement was in place, which is actually big deal. Anyone paid to consult or render services for that campaign should be under intense scrutiny.
      • mikeyouse 8y ago
        They are.. which is why they have dozens of entries in the FEC's disbursement database since June 2015: https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?two_year_transaction_period=2016&data_type=processed&recipient_name=the+groundwork&min_date=01%2F01%2F2015&max_date=12%2F31%2F2016 https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?two_year_transaction...
• jiojfdsal3 8y ago
  "(00:54:33) An employee asks what Google is going to do about “misinformation” and “fake news” shared by “low-information voters.” Pichai responds by stating that “investments in machine learning and AI” are a “big opportunity” to fix the problem." Anyone find this disturbing? They're trying to use AI to manipulate what users 'should' see?
  • jf 8y ago
    Using AI to manipulate what you see is already happening - especially if you browse the web without an adblocker.
    • jiojfdsal3 8y ago
      Yeah, but this directly has ramifications for our democracy, doesn't it? It looks they're actively trying to prevent certain content from being seen while exposing the content Google executives feel the masses 'should' see. This doesn't seem very neutral to me. The leaked video is quite disturbing.
      • IggleSniggle 8y ago
        Every action or inaction with any social context is a political action. Who gets to decide what “neutral” even is, anyway? Of course this has ramifications for our democracy, along with every single other piece of media you’ve ever consumed. I want my search engine to make me smarter and better informed and not baby me with only the content I already know or believe. In that respect, I don’t want censorship. But I also don’t want it to try and feed me just any old information that happens to be sitting around.
      • dragonwriter 8y ago
        > It looks they're actively trying to prevent certain content from being seen while exposing the content Google executives feel the masses 'should' see. Even if they were doing this overtly to promote a political view rather than to address the problem—false information—that the question expressly raises, this would be protected political speech. > This doesn't seem very neutral to me. Even if it didn't (and the actual answer to the actual question does not suggest political bias unless false propaganda uniquely favors one side), so what? What corporation, particularly in the business of distributing current events information, is strictly politically neutral? Certainly none of the ones pushing the narrative that this should be considered disturbing.
• was_boring 8y ago
  What is normally covered during a Google TGIF all-hands, especially during a slow week? I imagine this is not the normal.
  • d4l3k 8y ago
    It's normally product announcements and any other issues/news about the company along with a Q&A session with the top leadership.
• jessaustin 8y ago
  Wow they get lots of comments over at Breitbart. 11k on TFA, 35k on a soundbite from Cher, 22k for some ridiculous complaint about Serena (hmmm, is this some sort of theme?), 3500 on some guy having a heart attack. Is this normal for partisan news sites? They need to figure out some way of monetizing those comments.
  • jacquesm 8y ago
    > They need to figure out some way of monetizing those comments. The people funding those sites are cleaning up with the votes they've bought in this way. The comments are the monetization.
    • jessaustin 8y ago
      I suppose that's possible, but it seems rather convoluted. Why wouldn't those hypothetical funders simply bribe both branches of the status quo party like every other rich asshole does? I might change my mind about all this if any of the actually-different young democrats who have forsworn such financing are actually elected this fall...
      • jacquesm 8y ago
        I'm not aware of any such ridiculous sites on the left side of the spectrum, insofar as you could call the democrats 'left', in most countries a party with their political stance would still be on the right. Some would argue the USA does not have a functioning left wing party.
        • tinco 8y ago
          The USA has no functional political parties. The Republicans won on a zero integrity populist gambit that is betraying its voter base and the ideals of the party with every stroke of his pen and typed character. The Democrats are so mired in their internal politics and fear of having and identity they produced an agenda and candidate so weak they lost to a senile compulsive liar.
        • 8y ago
• woodruffw 8y ago
  For those interested in watching the video without feeding into Brietbart's ad/engagement numbers, I've mirrored it here: https://yossarian.net/google.mp4 https://yossarian.net/google.mp4
  • caffeinewriter 8y ago
    Here's an alternate mirror as well. [link removed] Edit: I'm removing my own copy, since I just realized I didn't set up a contact for that site, and I'd rather play it safe than sorry. Others have mirrored it, and one's on YouTube at present: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5gPdrlyc84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5gPdrlyc84
    • 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
      Why hasn’t anyone hosted it on YouTube yet? Serious question.
      • xianb 8y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5gPdrlyc84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5gPdrlyc84 people have, but who knows how long it'll last
        • 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
          Thanks for the link. YouTube has a better mobile UX for me.
        • toomuchtodo 8y ago
          "Removed by user"
          • deleted 8y ago
            [deleted]
      • woodruffw 8y ago
        In my case, it was just easier to upload it to my own server.
• throwaway_trust 8y ago
  To be honest so much corporate speak. Only Sergei's voice seems to be authentic. Everyone else trying to be extremely careful with their language of comments even though it's not a public event. And "misinformation" and "fake news" will be combatted by AI? Seriously? That is like saying, "I have no clue but I will use some buzzwords". Pichai/GOOG knows AI better than everyone. I think they still don't have plan for combatting misinformation.
  • gizmo686 8y ago
    I think they are being genuine when they say their plan is to combat fake news with AI; their business is built around AI. It is one of their core competencies. I think they are going to fail, and quietly increase the human involvement once they realize that their AI isn't good enough. Then they will slowly scale back the humans as their AI improves, until the next controversy when they realize that they still need humans.
    • throwaway_trust 8y ago
      > I think they are going to fail, and quietly increase the human involvement once they realize that their AI isn't good enough. Then they will slowly scale back the humans as their AI improves, until the next controversy when they realize that they still need humans. Exactly. AI is not good at subjective decisions of qualitative data. For example, nobody knows any political candidate's net worth apart from IRS, until they make those records public. And say political candidates make statements that they are way less or way more than their net worth they cannot detect it is true or false. That's why I was surprised. Pichai is smart enough that AI can't combat fake news. Hence he was just saying to save face.
      • abtinf 8y ago
        Short of launching a forensic investigation, subpoenaing records, and carefully watching you, how would the IRS know your net worth?
      • ehsankia 8y ago
• fallingfrog 8y ago
  Wait, you mean there's bias in our media? All joking aside- I remember watching ed Snowden go from being a "whistleblower" to a "leaker" in the space of 8 hours. I watched Alexandria ocasio Cortez go from a bold new voice to being portrayed as a know-nothing (in a pretty sexist way) in about 6 hours. I remember how all the media were creaming themselves with excitement over the wmd's they were going to find in Iraq. I observe how the crimes of saudi Arabia are getting papered over and not reported right now. So yeah.. not surprising.
  • tzs 8y ago
    What media are you talking about? I Googled in Google News for Alexandria ocasio Cortes, and almost all of the coverage I found from mainstream publications was positive.
    • hotpockets 8y ago
      I checked and results are very different if you spell her name with a z, as she does.
      • tzs 8y ago
        Ahhh....OK. I copy/pasted the spelling from the comment I replied to. It didn't occur to me to check to see if it was spelled right there.
      • fallingfrog 8y ago
        Thanks, corrected
      • mavhc 8y ago
        I don't see a difference, or much in the way of attack articles
        • hotpockets 8y ago
          The "s" page had a bunch of month-old stuff. The "z" page was more recent news. I just rechecked and it's mostly the same way (though we're already in a different news cycle). When I check previously, 4 out the first 5 links were negative. Now, it's 3 out of 6. (Different news cycle) https://screenshots.firefox.com/c8bGMXUBBHMFkqga/www.google.com https://screenshots.firefox.com/c8bGMXUBBHMFkqga/www.google.... vs https://screenshots.firefox.com/UeE3uvdbOyBrvvKT/www.google.com https://screenshots.firefox.com/UeE3uvdbOyBrvvKT/www.google....
• codeonfire 8y ago
  Google has definitely jumped the shark with their political leanings. They have been sued for implementing hiring quotas and discriminating on race, sex, and age. You can read the complaint here https://www.scribd.com/embeds/372792998/content https://www.scribd.com/embeds/372792998/content While Sergey seems to care about immigrants like himself, lgbtq, and women, he does not give a flying fuck about age discrimination, which is a legally protected class in America. Ultimately nothing lasts forever, and unfortunately there is some truth in right wing characterizations of Google. People stuck in the middle of the political spectrum, everyday non-racist people who are not part of any particular "group", have no party or supporters on either side.
  • jayd16 8y ago
    Your argument only makes sense if you think immigrants, lgbtq and women are not every day people.
    • codeonfire 8y ago
      Once you accept and identify as a label then you are no longer part of the middle. That is one of the main arguments against race quotas and affirmative action. It taints the whole idea of equality and neutrality.
      • codeonfire 8y ago
        Downvote for truth if you want. Got Karma to burn. Execs that say they want "diversity" want H1B slots for visa slaves. It was brought up in the linked video. 52:40 what they are really worried about. They don't care about equality. People want to flee BRIC nations and google wants cheap labor that can't quit their jobs.
      • jayd16 8y ago
        Identifying as a woman means you are not in the middle?
        • 8y ago
• notaboutdave 8y ago
  > People didn't vote for our person! Change the algorithms! This is so corrupt and manipulative it makes me sad.
• nodesocket 8y ago
  I find it a bit absurd when I hear pundits and media types claim that liberal bias doesn't exists in silicon valley tech companies (top to bottom). As somebody who lived in San Francisco for five plus years, I can firmly attest it is more than bias. It's utter disdain, hatred, and prejudice. Just look at how James Damore was handled it should be clear that diversity of thought and individualism is not accepted. It's a complete echo chamber of shaming culture who stand on a pedestal of moral superiority. Another example, Antirez has been absolutely mob shamed into changing master/slave in Redis by a Google employee. If you are against the change because it's an industry standard you are called a racist.
  • jayd16 8y ago
    I don't think anyone claims Californians working in SF aren't liberal. What you really mean is you want to be a mildly bigoted in peace and/or demand attention because historically disadvantaged groups are getting attention without any backlash while simultaneously telling others to get over their own insecurities. When people say you have a persecution complex you think its a liberal agenda. Case in point, no one thinks caring about industry standards makes you racist. Not caring about what makes others uncomfortable so you don't have to learn a new word is what's frustrating. The appropriate response to a silly request like that is "oh, uh, sure whatever. Just update the wiki."
    • spangry 8y ago
      It's not just a simple case of 'update the wiki'. You've actually got to modify the code and potentially break already established APIs (and break scripts that parse redis logs). But putting aside the fact that it's not costless to make these sorts of changes, it's also pointless. These people will never be satisfied. They're not offended; they're bullies who want to control other people and virtue signal to their bully friends. Giving in to their 'little change' just encourages more bullying, more salami-slicing, more 'little changes' (e.g. removing any reference to the word 'whitelist', instituting a code of conduct etc.). Redis is open-source: if their political sensibilities are so offended, they can fork the project (like ayojs for example, https://github.com/ayojs/ayo https://github.com/ayojs/ayo).
• iamjk 8y ago
  The video won't load on Chrome for me, but it works on Safari. Is this Google's doing?
  • rsj_hn 8y ago
    I went on Breitbart's site and it loads fine in chrome. Also, Google returns it as a top search result. So, credit where credit is due.
• randomposter44 8y ago
  Part of my decision for leaving Google was the insane left leaning bias within the company. I never outed myself as a conservative person because I've heard coworkers equate republicans to monsters.
  • jayd16 8y ago
    You should separate what Californians think of conservatives from what they think about Republicans. California has a lot of liberterian leaning views but not a lot of respect for the GOP.
  • ryanobjc 8y ago
    I feel bad for conservatives these days. Your standard bearers are not very good people. For example at this very minute the rest of the world is discussing if trumps son really meant to be antisemetic or not. That’s the pinnacle of the modern GOP, which you have to admit is tied with political conservatism. GOP = conservative. What the fuck are the rest of us supposed to do with thus situation? You say you’re conservative... what does that mean you even believe in? Because your party apparently means white supremacy, anti-semitism, concern trolling over deficits, just for starters. So I guess the only choice is to decouple your beliefs with the GOP, right? Still though we’ve had decades of “GOP = conservative” messaging. You’re in a right pickle.
  • jasonvorhe 8y ago
    Maybe being conservative just isn't that smart to begin with?
    • dang 8y ago
      Please don't foment flamewars on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • stryk 8y ago
      THIS is a not-insignificant part of the problem. right here. You jumped straight out of the gate with calling the OP stupid. Not even a feigned attempt at some sort of discussion or debate. You saw the word "conservative" and BOOM it's right into the Us vs. Them, Me vs. You, Good vs. Evil. I just don't see how that is healthy, at all, for anyone or anything including the country. It's childish. Social media and karma/upvotes/likes/karma/fake-internet-points, whatever you want to call it, has devolved us into kids on the schoolyard. United we stand, divided we fall. grow up
• dmitrygr 8y ago
  I have no comment on the content of this, since I don't want to get fired for saying anything remotely close to what I think. I am kind of curious how this video was obtained however.
  • ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    After the Damore thing, Breitbart posted several anonymous interviews with conservative Googlers and Xooglers, so it seems like they've cultivated a group of contacts there. One of them specifically even discussed this exact TGIF and what it was like. I suspect one of those contacts leaked this to them as well.
    • dmitrygr 8y ago
      Officially, the penalty for leaking is termination. I cannot imagine anyone who'd risk that.
      • ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        There's been a large number of leakers at Google over the last year, so there's definitely people who find Google's misdeeds worth publicizing, even at personal risk. And that's on both sides of the political spectrum. As I mentioned, several conservative Googlers have already talked about internal matters with Breitbart. Damore's memo was an internal-only document that was leaked on the liberal side. There were leaks about Project Maven and the censorship program Google's developing for China. Though I would have to wonder how much easier this leak would be to catch. Google would "merely" need to identify who has somewhat-recently accessed this video file, and as an older recording, the number of viewers has certainly tapered off significantly. To be honest, I'm seriously curious, are you saying your employment with Google is more important than what you think is right or good? While personally, I wouldn't leak from an employer I felt was doing bad things, I also wouldn't need to be terminated: I'd walk out the door.
      • cmrdporcupine 8y ago
        I can -- leaks seem to be becoming the norm rather than the exception. The company has seemingly gotten too large for the remarkably open culture we had when I joined. As a Canadian I don't have a strong opinion on the content of this video, though I remember the event. But I do have a strong opinion about leaks/leakers. It's not that I want what we do to be 'secret' -- it's that I want an internal work culture that is open and I want to know what's going on across the company and have issues discussed out in the open. Finally, no I am not surprised people leak even with risk of termination. There's lots of jobs in the valley for people to switch to.
• tinkerteller 8y ago
  This is great stuff and chance to see Google’s famous TGIFs. Also rare chance to hear Larry Page’s changed voice. It’s beyond shocking however that leaders of search engine business so openly preaching their political views. Given this is at the highest level, one cannot have confidence that things would remain bias free. I would have expected these leaders to make sure they keep their political views to themselves just to be fair to conservative employees who are ironically minority at Google.
  • akhilcacharya 8y ago
    Google was around when W was elected and re-elected and nothing of the sort happened at their all hands then. It’s absolutely different because the particular candidate that won is uniquely odious in his approach and policy proposals that has/could negatively impact the lives of many Googlers.
    • xyzzyz 8y ago
      Overall negative impact on Googlers of decade-long war, increased airport security and PATRIOT act in general has greatly outpaced whatever extra negative impact Trump has caused so far and will cause in foreseeable future. I'm not surprised in the slightest that majority of Googlers are not liking Trump very much; there are plenty of very good reasons to do so. However, as much as media hype it, let's not pretend that he's so much worse that W in terms of what actually happened since his election.
  • cromwellian 8y ago
    Google has vast numbers of minority and immigrant employees, do you expect them to have no opinion when their own employees are afraid of the government discriminating against them? This isn't political bias against conservative economic ideas, or even classic social conservatism, this is bias against racism and bigotry. And were they wrong? Two years later, everything people had been worrying about in this TGIF got worse. Every few weeks some new dog whistle is blown. There are some things which are just wrong, that if you're not a coward, you take a stand against. I hope any congressional testimony over this is combative, not milquetoast PR speak. Rather than spin, come right out and say: the company's values stand against racism and bigotry, and if Ted Cruz melts like a snowflake over it, so be it.
• ChuckMcM 8y ago
  Wow, they are still using Dory. That is the question collecting software that Taliver Heath wrote. It was a pretty brilliant idea, people submit questions and other people vote the questions up (or down) and top ranked questions get selected automatically. Its interesting to think about Brietbart putting this out there as some 'evil' thing, given what their all hands meeting would have looked like if the election had gone the other way. But from a tech perspective its always destabilizing to endorse a political ideology just like it is destabilizing to endorse a religious ideology in what is a collective for economic output. That said, the previous tech position of 'hands off' (very limited engagement except for very specific technical issues like ITAR restrictions on strong crypto) did not do tech any favors when it came to legislation. I'm not sure what the answer is here other than "its complicated."
  • geofft 8y ago
    > But from a tech perspective its always destabilizing to endorse a political ideology just like it is destabilizing to endorse a religious ideology in what is a collective for economic output. Is it destabilizing at all? The British Empire, one of the world's most economically successful projects, had its own religious ideology. The US has a "Protestant work ethic." When have we historically seen the adoption of religion as destabilizing? It might be wrong, sure, but I don't think we have evidence to conclude that it's unprofitable.
    • mc32 8y ago
      Didn't catholics in britain have a hard time og it for some period? Didn't that contribute to internal instability? Or am i misrecalling history lessons?
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      • lhopki01 8y ago
        Much earlier period in history before there was a United Kindom.
• petermcneeley 8y ago
  Twice it was mentioned that the cause of WWII was boredom. Is this actually a real theory?
  • jjtheblunt 8y ago
    No, it's hubris by arrogant fools.
  • rdtsc 8y ago
    I found that interesting as well. He seemed to be the most informed and data driven. "Data shows that no, we are not as divided, but that these voters are bored and have routine jobs..." First result I found was this article: https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/14/health/boredom-extreme-politics/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/14/health/boredom-extreme-politi... Which references a few studies: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ejsp.2205 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ejsp.2205 Though can only see the abstract. It shows that boredom leads to extremism both left and right wing as extremism provides meaning. I can see that to some extent. Article is the just the abstract, need a login and possibly to pay money to read the full text. Another one: http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2016/images/07/13/consevatismasmotivatedsocialcognition_critique.pdf http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2016/images/07/13/consevatismas...
  • paganel 8y ago
    > Is this actually a real theory? I'm not a professional historian by any means, but I think Ernst Nolte's opinion (he was a German historian) that WW2 was actually an European Civil War fought between fascism and communism is right (you can read an introduction into the whole discussion on his wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Nolte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Nolte). His basic idea was summed up by another historian, Norman Davies (you can ignore the "leftists" part at the end): > Ten years later, in The European Civil War (1987), the German historian Ernst Nolte (b. 1923) brought ideology into the equation. The First World War had spawned the Bolshevik Revolution, he maintained, and fascism should be seen as a "counter-revolution" against communism. More pointedly, since fascism followed communism chronologically, he argued that some of the Nazis' political techniques and practices had been copied from those of the Soviet Union. Needless to say, such propositions were thought anathema by leftists who believe that fascism was an original and unparalleled evil. People in the States and generally speaking in Western Europe tend to forget how much communism (Bolshevism as it was called back then) was seen as a threat after WW1. I happened to view a video on YT a couple of days ago of German Radio's official announcement of Hitler's death. I don't know German but the only word that I could distinctively comprehend was "Bolshevism" (or whatever its spelling is in German), which shows that even with Hitler dead and defeat just a few of days away the Germans were still thinking about the big bad man coming from the East (as far as I could heard no mention was made in the same announcement about the "Amerikaner").
• in3d 8y ago
  My biggest takeaway is that Sergey Brin needs to stick to technology. The “boredom” explanation for Trump’s victory might be the stupidest one yet.
• akhilcacharya 8y ago
  I’m fascinated by the parallels between the fascination with this leaked all hands and the external interest in the interns cultures of elite universities and the like - is the implication that Googleplex and Harvard Yard share a similar space in our culture now?
• misterbowfinger 8y ago
  I'm honestly confused why they didn't just postpone TGIF and then ignore the election. Just say someone got sick or something. Let employees deal with the results themselves and move on.
  • jasonvorhe 8y ago
    Because they have a lot of people on staff who were genuinely scared of the lunatic who just got elected because they're gay, trans, from a different country, muslim or black. It's good knowing that the giant behemoth you work for will have your back, and even support from your peers will do a lot.
• greyman 8y ago
  To be honest, it caught me by surprise how politically unified the whole top management is, and how strong their political convictions are. It is publicly known that Eric Schmidt for example supports democrats, but I (wrongly) supposed that is mostly his personal affinity. Now it seems that not; the company as a whole supports one political party. Now the question is how is this reflected in their products (search, Google News, etc).
  • minwcnt5 8y ago
    Isn't it more that they're against Trump, and what the Republican party has become? They are only for one political party because there is only one alternative. Back in the day, I know that their leadership was close with people like Colin Powell and Kissinger, so there are probably some traditional republican values held, it's just that in recent years the party has become completely toxic.
    • greyman 8y ago
      But this is also basically just a political opinion - some people agree that it is "toxic", others not.
    • lake99 8y ago
      If there is a contemporary personification of Evil, that is Kissinger. It's not about "traditional republican values" either. As far as I can see, both your big parties are a continuation of Kissinger's policies.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  • mikejb 8y ago
    I don't think they're that unified; They united here to support employees who worried about their future. But I would assume they have certain common views, e.g. that immigration isn't the all-time evil. Also, the company as a hole supports both parties - their lobbying efforts (and campaign contributions) are more diverse, which makes sense since you don't want to bet everything on a single horse/party.
• on_and_off 8y ago
  I have not watched the whole video but I don't see how that's surprising, offensive or problematic.
• newnewpdro 8y ago
  This video presents as if the leadership is coddling a room full of kindergartners sad over the loaner class pet going home. Company full of children.
  • codeonfire 8y ago
    Are you surprised? Google invented infantilism of their workers. They invented basic colors, office slides, and office ball pits. They make new employees wear propeller hats. They want a naive "ender's game" work force while their business of monitoring the web browsing and location of hundreds of millions of people is actually very serious.
    • expathacker 8y ago
      > Google invented infantilism of their workers. They invented basic colors, office slides, and office ball pits. They make new employees wear propeller hats. In 1999/2000 I was riding office slides at excite@home[1], and jumping in ball-pits at idealab when Google wasn't at all noteworthy except that their fans were exhausting directly into mine from their adjacent cages at globalcenter. > They want a naive "ender's game" work force while their business of monitoring the web browsing and location of hundreds of millions of people is actually very serious. Interesting choice of comparison, as Ender's Game is frequently criticized being an apologia for Hitler[2][3] or a Handmaid's tale for conservatives. Fanboy thugs of Card's "Handmaid's tale for conservatives". and fanboy thugs of Orson Scott Card were encouraged to attack the writers who posed this argument[4]. Card himself is a rather outspoken conservative and homophobe[5], [6] whose work is primarily about encouraging mormon ideals/moral absolutism and has essentially called for an anti-gay genocide[7]. Ender's brother and sister over the world by putting on online personaes, Locke and Demosthenes of both the right and left soas to control popular opinion by owning both sides of the debate. In a way was sort of a guidebook to modern right-wing political strategy. In a subsequent book, Ender moves to a world colonized by Brazilians. Brazil itself was a favorite post-WW2 hiding spot for Nazis.[8] [1] https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Who-killed-Excite-home-The-suspects-include-2838367.php https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Who-killed-Excite-ho... [2] https://peachfront.diaryland.com/enderhitlte.html https://peachfront.diaryland.com/enderhitlte.html [3] http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm [4] http://atdt.freeshell.org/k5/story_2005_5_28_22428_7034.html http://atdt.freeshell.org/k5/story_2005_5_28_22428_7034.html (postscript section) [5] https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/075-43-45.pdf https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/arti... [6] https://www.salon.com/2013/05/07/sci_fi_icon_orson_scott_card_hates_fan_fiction_the_homosexual_agenda_partner/ https://www.salon.com/2013/05/07/sci_fi_icon_orson_scott_car... [7] http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2013-05-09-1.html http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2013-05-09-1.html. [8] https://www.history.com/news/how-south-america-became-a-nazi-haven https://www.history.com/news/how-south-america-became-a-nazi...
• wyclif 8y ago
  “We all need a hug,” she then instructs the audience of Google employees to hug the person closest to them.
• justaaron 8y ago
  I should bloody well hope that anyone with a brain has a bias against astro-turf fake-populist wanna-be dictators. We owe no consideration to deliberately-destructive trolls seeking to undermine all notions of civility and social progress merely to feed Rupert Murdochs empire of faeces further banquet tables full of roasted dead orphans. Breitbart, OTOH, is precisely a harmful entity seeking to undermine all that is decent and good.
  • justaaron 8y ago
    But no, Google news is not ignoring or de-prioritizing their filth-cum-journalism. I am obviously not their target reader, and yet my news.google.com feed contains plenty of Fox propaganda. Google obviously has no qualms about a "moron tax" sheesh, look at Youtube. it's full of alt-right tripe.
    • tkmo 8y ago
      Of course this thread is guaranteed to be an absolute shit show, but it's revealing the level of intense emotiveness shown by your post and the one before it, and most of all by the Google execs. Were this directed at a tiny ideological fraction of the population it could be OK, but we are talking about give or take half of the voters of the USA, UK, Poland, Hungary, Austria, etc., etc. And when Google has such a near monopoly on massive swathes of the web that is quite concerning.
      • threeseed 8y ago
        Not sure where you’re getting the numbers to back up your 50% claim. At most it is around 15% in UK, 30% in the US and somewhat higher in the Eastern European countries. Alt right conservatism is not a mainstream ideology anywhere in the world. Nor will it ever the way things are going.
        • tkmo 8y ago
          In proper terms, perhaps, but things like Trump, Brexit, and strongly anti-immigrant, populist conservative, leaders like Salvini, Orban, etc., in Europe, are all generally placed in the same camp by the media. Ultimately we are discussing the visible rage and despisement towards the winnning side of a national US election vote. That is incredibly concerning coming from a company as powerful as Google, and we know the same sentiment is shared across Hollywood and the mass media.
• singularity2001 8y ago
  How ironic that youtube might have contributed to the radicalization of the world (see recent discussion). They realized too late or valued their revenues higher than values. Or they adopted the value of a neutral stance, which is good. At least in theory; in practice there hardly is any true neutral.
• andresp 8y ago
  What is most worrisome is the absolute lack of ideological diversity. Google might want to consider tackling this on their diversity policies and work groups. In the light of this video and James Damore reports I can imagine that the company is not a safe space where conservatives can freely express their points of view without feeling uncomfortable or taking the risk of being ostracized or penalized throughout their career. It would be interesting to know what led to this lack of diversity, potentially addressing some recruitment bias with conservative quotas or positive discrimination while hiring. Additionally, anonimously investigating whether a compensation gap exists between conservatives and democrats could identify whether the discrimination also happens during other stages of the employee career at Google, e.g. promotions, bonus, projects... This could be done by the company or enforced by the state itself (like what happens in the UK) and the results should ideally be publicly available.
• DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
  it has become very difficult to not talk about politics & policy when having a tech discussion at work (and even on LinkedIn) today. The previous stance, that "tech should be neutral" has been, and remains a cowardly position to take by management. Personally not a fan of google's ideology but I really appreciate their openly addressing the politics-elephant in the room.
  • oriol16 8y ago
    Talking politics at work is only ok if it's left wing. Mocking Trump and his voters, calling people racist and morons, that gets you an applause. Showing understanding for the opposite site gets you in trouble. That's chapter one of "surviving in the workplace in 2018".
    • davedx 8y ago
      The opposite side, with its “very fine people”?
      • oriol16 8y ago
        50 million voters in US only with above average income/education. The fact they voted for Trump doesn't mean they would share all his faults, and it doesn't even mean that you can describe them before you can critizice them, call them offenders, and a long list of "very fine things".
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
• DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
  HN can be a huge traffic generator, so can we change the URL to youtube instead of sending traffic to breitbart?
  • dash2 8y ago
    I think if the story is worth reading then Breitbart deserves credit for breaking it, whether or not you think they are bad guys.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • happytoexplain 8y ago
      I disagree - I think there's some level of malevolence and ill will at which an organization doesn't deserve any help if at all possible, even if they simply wrote a true story. If we were in some reality where there was no other way to consume the story, sure, then it's worth linking to them. But we'll always have other ways to instantly and easily host information.
• maxehmookau 8y ago
  Brietbart is not journalism. It is a far-right propaganda outfit and its "work" has no place on a civilised forum such as HN.
  • nailer 8y ago
    Exactly how is this video 'far right propaganda'? The people talking are all Google executives. It's an hour long, there's no cuts or edits.
    • maxehmookau 8y ago
      This video is not. Linking to breitbart supports them financially. We should not do that. I noticed that people have posted links to the video that Breitbart won't financially gain from.
• test001only 8y ago
  When people/organisation are categorised in to buckets of left and right leaning, it becomes difficult to have a clear conversion. What happened here was a president was elected whose election promises would negatively affect employees of the organisation. They were right in trying to comfort their employees, especially being Google who are famously known to pamper their employees. This is not being left or right, this is just being human.
• cromwellian 8y ago
  Seems no one understands Popper's Paradox. Lots of talk about it being unfair that a workplace is intolerant of people who are intolerant. There are just some values that are not negotiable for a modern, civilized, homogeneous society. We're not talking about debates about the level of social welfare, or regulation, we're talking about common decency of treating people equally, regardless of gender, sexuality, or ethnic origin. There's no reason anyone has to respect ethno-nationalist views against immigrants.
  • test001only 8y ago
    This exactly. The common playbook now seems to be to hide racism and intolerance under the blanket of conservative and accusing anyone who opposes that to be against free speech and conservatives. These nonnegotiable values do not belong to the left or right, it belongs to the society as a whole.
    • lbsnake7 8y ago
      Who decides these nonnegotiable values? Society as a whole? If half of the country voted for Trump and believes in his values, then half of the society that you are a part of has different nonnegotiable values. So these values are no longer nonnegotiable and are now very much just whatever values the majority holds.
      • test001only 8y ago
        Why do you assume the basic values differ between these two set of people. That is seeing people in black and white. Let us take a nonnegotiable value of not being racist. Are you implying that 50% of the people are racist. Nope - that is certainly not the case. People who voted for Trump might have voted for various other things - there might have been certain issues that they resonated with him, vote for Republican party etc. They might have voted for him despite his flaws.
    • smsm42 8y ago
      No, the common playbook now seems to be to accuse anybody disagreeing with the hard left in racism and intolerance as an attempt to avoid any discussion with them and if possibly, demolish their personality and their life so nobody else would dare to speak up. While posing as "society as a whole" and taking on oneself to define what is nonnegotiable (which curiously seems to be exactly matching the views of whoever is declaring it) and unilaterally deciding that only the views the declarer holds or ones extremely similar to them are even worth discussing, and people not agreeing to them must be unpersoned.