When I started working at Google 14 years ago its most striking feature was the contrast between its external secrecy and its internal transparency. Essentially

When I started working at Google 14 years ago its most striking feature was the contrast between its external secrecy and its internal transparency. Essentially all engineering information was accessible to all engineers. Obviously the company has grown a lot since then, and there are numerous legal constraints on its internal transparency (contracts, national laws, commercial sensitivity, etc) but it is still has a culture of internal openness unusual for a company of its size. Many rank-and-file employees, myself included, would like to preserve that internal openness even though we may oppose recent leadership decisions regarding Maven, China, and sexual harassment, or support stronger government regulation of privacy. Hence employees' ambivalence about leaking: it has helped shine a light on important issues, but it risks important future decisions being made in secret.