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Ex-googler, I felt on the majority of issues, both as an entity but also as a collection of people, the intent was to do good. I was much warier of trusting Go
by plantain 7y ago
Ex-googler, I felt on the majority of issues, both as an entity but also as a collection of people, the intent was to do good.
I was much warier of trusting Google with my data pre-Google to post-Google.
It's constantly drilled into you the sacred nature of user data, and the technical protections seemed sound.
The elements I was most uncomfortable with were the profit-shifting/tax optimization, i.e. the Double-Irish Dutch Sandwich.
- sneak 7y agoNot the fact that the US military intelligence apparatus has real-time warrantless access to the data they pretend is sacred?
- mav3rick 7y agoBlame the US govt. and your senators for that. Not a law abiding corporation.
- sneak 7y agoI'm not of the belief that "I was just following lawful orders" is a legitimate defense of infringing upon someone's human rights. Historically, it also seems a shaky defense argument.
- mav3rick 7y agoYes completely forget how they shut shop in China. It's easy to write all this from a keyboard when the US govt is not after you.
- mav3rick 7y agoYou clearly don't live in the real world. Every company is to comply with these
- sneak 7y agoThere are alternative options. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio
- mav3rick 7y agoHere you go - https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/05/21/google-epic-court-fight-with-us-government-over-gmail-privacy/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/05/21/googl... Now find some obscure niche case and blame Google. It's fun when the anti Google narrative here is spoilt.
- kyrra 7y agoAs a googler (opinions are my own) in payments that gets to see that side of things, I'd disagree with you. To be able to do the Irish haven, Google is and was abiding by all laws in doing it. Google was doing what all the lawmakers of various countries allowed, and they allowed it for a long time. It also only impacted a portion of Google's overall revenue. It also led to Google having a fairly massive presence in Ireland, which I'm sure the people employed there are happy with. As countries have been figuring out how to tax companies like Google, they have been forcing them to create local entities so all business with people in those countries can be taxed locally. I can tell you this was not a simple thing for companies like Google to conform to (massive amounts of work by lots of people to bill locally). You can see if you are billed locally based on the company your invoice or payment is collected under.