3 ms·

Right. People are reading into this way too much, in reality it looks like pretty standard "don't use legalese when you're not a lawyer" type training that I've

• mountainb 6y ago
  The Hal Varian quote there is a good illustration of this. If it was an attorney representing Google talking over e-mail, such an aside would be protected by attorney-client privilege and would not have been subject to discovery. It is a banal and funny comment that would have been fine to make in-person. It should not have been made in writing. This is why stuff like Slack is like opening a Lebanese fertilizer storage warehouse right next to your fireworks factory. It is just stupid to make even more of your company communications subject to discovery. Email and note-taking software is bad and dangerous enough.
• ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  Well, it also has the desirable side effect of heading off writing colorful things that look bad if leaked to the public. A classic example is Microsoft's "knife the baby" moment back in the late '90s: https://www.theregister.com/1998/11/06/were_talking_about_knifing/ https://www.theregister.com/1998/11/06/were_talking_about_kn...
• jariel 6y ago
  These terms are not 'legalise' rather, they are just specific terms with specific meaning that can be construed by regulators to mean certain things. G is basically saying: "Don't actually say in writing that we are trying to take 100% market share, because that won't be perceived well" Edit: for the most part, 'legalese' is just 'precise English', ie words mean what they mean.