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Well, here's a few things off of the top of my head that have eroded my trust: 1. Contracts with the Department of Defense 2. Participation in project PRISM

Well, here's a few things off of the top of my head that have eroded my trust: 1. Contracts with the Department of Defense 2. Participation in project PRISM 3. The Google Graveyard (https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/) 4. Abandoning "Don't be evil"

PhasmaFelis 7y ago
I think this Pichai quote was striking: > He said he tries “to understand when I feel there is something which caused breaking of trust and see what we can do to improve,” adding that “it’s definitely gotten harder to do this at the scale we are doing it.” It's funny how concepts that any 15-year-old could grasp become "harder to understand" when someone offer you millions of dollars to not understand them.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  That goes both ways. Google employees live extremely pampered lives and expect to go on doing so, while protesting the things the company does in order to provide them that.
  - Aeolun 7y ago
    I’m fairly confident there is no need for Google to do anything to keep making boatloads of money.
shubhamjain 7y ago
I wonder if the foundational idealism ("don't be evil") is acting more like a baggage. Look at Microsoft. There were dissenting voices in the company regarding their involvement with the military, but the CEO was blunt. "We made a principled decision that we’re not going to withhold technology from institutions that we have elected in democracies to protect the freedoms we enjoy” [1] On the other hand, Google had to back down [2]. I don't think this would work out for Google in the long term, that is, if they keep caving in to pressure from employees. Maybe trust erosion is inevitable if you're trying to pretend you're not just another profit-making corporation. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18240300/microsoft-ceo-defends-pentagon-contract-ar-headsets-employee-outcry https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18240300/microsoft-ceo-de... [2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/06/01/google-to-drop-pentagon-ai-contract-after-employees-called-it-the-business-of-war/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/06/01...
- dwoozle 7y ago
  Microsoft has a less passionate employee base. They want to show up and get their check and go home to their families. Not as many single twenty somethings who take a lot of pride in being “Googlers” and care a lot about what that means.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    This is a dysfunction in Google’s culture, not Microsoft’s. Being a “member” of a company shouldn’t be akin to being a member of, say, a church.
- Traster 7y ago
  I'm actually quite impressed by that line from Microsoft, it's clear, well thought out, and communicates a simple moral principle that can be used to reason about their entire policy. It's also quite bold in that it clearly implies that it won't co-operate with non-democratic regimes on projects they think are wrong, which I'm sure is not a zero cost decision.
  - praptak 7y ago
    I see it as one using weasel wording to sound principled while in fact it's not. In particular using "institutions we have elected to do X" instead of just "institutions that do X" steps around the question whether the institutions really do X. Which is, incidentally, the major concern of the opponents.
asuffield 7y ago
> 2. Participation in project PRISM I'm an ex-Googler, and I know how PRISM worked. This did not happen. All the statements made in https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html are true at the time they were written. The sentiment in the title of that post accurately reflects how everybody involved felt about it. (I can't talk about whether they're still true because I've not been there in nearly two years, I wouldn't know)
- mdrachuk 7y ago
  > I'm an ex-Googler, and I know how PRISM worked. This did not happen. But from the blog: > We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday. Does not match up
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    A small but not insignificant number of employees move between the security services and Google each year. In fact, the design of the NSA's interception nodes, rulesets and filtering systems resemble strongly many of Google's internal technologies (as evidenced by a leaked config file in the snowden documents)
  - Youden 7y ago
    Sure it matches up. The poster, today, is aware of how PRISM worked. The blog author, then, was not aware that PRISM existed.
- kerng 7y ago
  Still remember the picture from the NSA with a line between two Google data centers and the Google frontend terminating SSL and traffic between datacenter being in cleartext. And there was this big smiley face from the NSA on the slide!
- tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
  How sure are you that you would have known if there was collaboration? It's not as if that would be widely announced, even internally.
belltaco 7y ago
The big thing for me was when they started using GPS and WiFi location data on Android phones a few years ago to track which physical stores you visited, for advertising purposes. Somehow people here didn't think it was a big deal. If it was, say Microsoft, that did the same, I think it'd have been a big controversy. I think there's a bunch of "Google good, MS and Apple bad" mentality that lets Google get away with a lot of things.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  What harm did that cause you (or anyone)?

PhasmaFelis 7y ago

I think this Pichai quote was striking: > He said he tries “to understand when I feel there is something which caused breaking of trust and see what we can do to improve,” adding that “it’s definitely gotten harder to do this at the scale we are doing it.” It's funny how concepts that any 15-year-old could grasp become "harder to understand" when someone offer you millions of dollars to not understand them.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
goatinaboat 7y ago
That goes both ways. Google employees live extremely pampered lives and expect to go on doing so, while protesting the things the company does in order to provide them that.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  I’m fairly confident there is no need for Google to do anything to keep making boatloads of money.

shubhamjain 7y ago

I wonder if the foundational idealism ("don't be evil") is acting more like a baggage. Look at Microsoft. There were dissenting voices in the company regarding their involvement with the military, but the CEO was blunt. "We made a principled decision that we’re not going to withhold technology from institutions that we have elected in democracies to protect the freedoms we enjoy” [1] On the other hand, Google had to back down [2]. I don't think this would work out for Google in the long term, that is, if they keep caving in to pressure from employees. Maybe trust erosion is inevitable if you're trying to pretend you're not just another profit-making corporation. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18240300/microsoft-ceo-defends-pentagon-contract-ar-headsets-employee-outcry https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18240300/microsoft-ceo-de... [2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/06/01/google-to-drop-pentagon-ai-contract-after-employees-called-it-the-business-of-war/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/06/01...

dwoozle 7y ago
Microsoft has a less passionate employee base. They want to show up and get their check and go home to their families. Not as many single twenty somethings who take a lot of pride in being “Googlers” and care a lot about what that means.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  This is a dysfunction in Google’s culture, not Microsoft’s. Being a “member” of a company shouldn’t be akin to being a member of, say, a church.
Traster 7y ago
I'm actually quite impressed by that line from Microsoft, it's clear, well thought out, and communicates a simple moral principle that can be used to reason about their entire policy. It's also quite bold in that it clearly implies that it won't co-operate with non-democratic regimes on projects they think are wrong, which I'm sure is not a zero cost decision.
- praptak 7y ago
  I see it as one using weasel wording to sound principled while in fact it's not. In particular using "institutions we have elected to do X" instead of just "institutions that do X" steps around the question whether the institutions really do X. Which is, incidentally, the major concern of the opponents.

asuffield 7y ago

> 2. Participation in project PRISM I'm an ex-Googler, and I know how PRISM worked. This did not happen. All the statements made in https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html are true at the time they were written. The sentiment in the title of that post accurately reflects how everybody involved felt about it. (I can't talk about whether they're still true because I've not been there in nearly two years, I wouldn't know)

mdrachuk 7y ago
> I'm an ex-Googler, and I know how PRISM worked. This did not happen. But from the blog: > We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday. Does not match up
- londons_explore 7y ago
  A small but not insignificant number of employees move between the security services and Google each year. In fact, the design of the NSA's interception nodes, rulesets and filtering systems resemble strongly many of Google's internal technologies (as evidenced by a leaked config file in the snowden documents)
- Youden 7y ago
  Sure it matches up. The poster, today, is aware of how PRISM worked. The blog author, then, was not aware that PRISM existed.
kerng 7y ago
Still remember the picture from the NSA with a line between two Google data centers and the Google frontend terminating SSL and traffic between datacenter being in cleartext. And there was this big smiley face from the NSA on the slide!
tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
How sure are you that you would have known if there was collaboration? It's not as if that would be widely announced, even internally.

belltaco 7y ago

The big thing for me was when they started using GPS and WiFi location data on Android phones a few years ago to track which physical stores you visited, for advertising purposes. Somehow people here didn't think it was a big deal. If it was, say Microsoft, that did the same, I think it'd have been a big controversy. I think there's a bunch of "Google good, MS and Apple bad" mentality that lets Google get away with a lot of things.

londons_explore 7y ago
What harm did that cause you (or anyone)?