6 ms·

Altruistic expectations, no. But I seem to recall a time (up until perhaps 15 years ago) when Google would not have been expected to engage in such blatantly M

by vanusa 5y ago

Altruistic expectations, no. But I seem to recall a time (up until perhaps 15 years ago) when Google would not have been expected to engage in such blatantly Machiavellian tactics as placing fake op-eds. Nowadays though, I don't put anything past Google.

_jal 5y ago
Google is a huge, public company. Any ideals that survived going public will slowly be ground out by repeated exposure to management consultants from McKinsey and the hordes of MBAs attracted to the smell of ibanker excitement. You can't go public, or become part of a public firm, and not become more like the rest of the big players.
- poof131 5y ago
  The rampant cynicism regarding corporations is increasingly unhelpful. We’ve had forty years of hands off antitrust regulation and enforcement. We’ve had a bifurcating justice system that doesn’t hold white collar criminals accountable. It hasn’t always been this way and doesn’t have to stay this way. For those interested in the challenges we’re facing with monopolies and individuals trying to effect change, I recommend Matt Stoller’s substack [1]. 1. https://mattstoller.substack.com/ https://mattstoller.substack.com/
  - _jal 5y ago
    I love Matt. But tell me I'm wrong. Any proposed solution is going to have to explain how to change the very strong financial incentives that lead to people doing the same things over and over.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    I wouldn't call it cynicism, just being realistic. It is perfectly normal that a company, from the size to Amazon to sole proprietorship, tend to maximize profit - and one of the main ways is to minimize costs. I'm yet to see a single one that doesn't care about costs and survives. Now, there are different people, with varying morals. When they advance to major positions in a company, they make various decisions. Unfortunately, our culture rewards the actions and attitude of people like Gates who deliberately made many grey-area decisions that we might call "egoistic" or just plain "evil" if they were aimed at individuals, or like Bezos, who treats human beings in his warehouses like cattle. So I'm sorry, we are not the ones being cynical here.
  - javajosh 5y ago
    It seems every individual has their own process of understanding power, and cynicism is a middle stage. It comes after the beginning stage, the one we learn as kids, that is idealized and fair. This stage is the most important because it defines how things should be. Then, when you start out in the real world, you find out how things really are, and its painful, and that's the value of cynicism: it prevents the pain of disenchantment by pre-disenchanting you about everything. The third stage seems to be surprisingly rare, as most people either get stuck in stage 1, existing in a kind of shared delusion that all things are fine, despite the evidence that some aren't, or in stage 2, that all things are falling apart, despite evidence that some aren't. Stage 3 reconciles the previous stages, first by zooming out and seeing how transient and precious life is, civilization is, and how in this perspective, power is itself rather silly. There have been great kingdoms, entire societies, that have arisen and died, even in our brief recorded history. Lowering the stakes like this lets us relax and remember: nothing is forever. No law lasts forever, almost everything we try is an experiment, and it may fail. Armed with a profound knowledge of the absurdity of our large-scale situation, now we can zoom in and do our judging, knowing properly how ignorant we are, how ignorant the actors are, the abuser and victim alike. And we can begin to see opportunities for change. Small scale stuff, firing that abusive person, or even lightweight activism where you change something about your behavior to change things, if only a little. You are not going to have the grand-slam insight that fixes everything, or anything. Such an insight doesn't exist - or maybe it can, but it cannot be transmitted without great care, which presupposes a society that supports transmitting delicate ideas, which is already a society that is functioning pretty well. Essentially your comment is stage 3, because you remind the reader of the essential mutability of the system, and zoom out and show how its changed, and that there is every possibility of changing back to an earlier state where antitrust was actively enforced (read: successful antitrust enforcement gave political juice). If I could wish a thing into existence, it would be to engender a feeling of lightness to political discussion that comes from realizing this is all an experiment, nothing is written in stone, and we should feel free to try new things, knowing that they might not work, that real lives will be harmed when those experiments fail, but we also get good data about it for future decisions, so it comes out in the wash.
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    Until we have a government willing and able to rein in the excesses of corporations, realism is going to look a lot like cynicism. I'm not an anti-capitalist, and I don't expect such a government to just fall into my lap without a Herculean effort on the part of somebody, but I don't see any point in sugarcoating the current state of affairs. Corporations and other wealthy interests aren't just a symptom of our current malaise—they're a direct contributor to it.
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
If they're running this kinda psyops against their own employees imagine what's being done to the general public.
brightstep 5y ago
Unions reduce profits by giving employees a voice to protect themselves, demand the compensation they deserve, etc. It's therefore inevitable that corporations (Google, FAANG, or any others) will try to preempt or destroy them. It is their duty to shareholders.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Thankfully there are countries where whatever corporations think is against union law.
- drunkpotato 5y ago
  It's a common trope to say it's their duty to shareholders, but it's not. Their duty is to be diligent and transparent to their shareholders, but not to pursue short-term profits at any and all costs no matter what. Specifically, there is no legal requirement or duty for companies to be anti-union.
  - solarkraft 5y ago
    You're technically right, but don't the mechanisms strongly encourage it?
- headmelted 5y ago
  This is downvoted, I assume because people are maybe disagreeing with the principle rather than the validity of what you said. A lot of large companies clearly do look at unions as something that forces them to pay more compensation for less work, which they'd have to justify to shareholders and the board. Even if the board would be cool with it, and they could make it fly with shareholders, leadership bonuses and stock grants are tied to performance. I really don't see where this is an incorrect statement to make.
  - pwinnski 5y ago
    "It is their duty to shareholders" is a factually-incorrect statement.[0] That piece of misinformation needs to die out. 0. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-companies-legally-obligated-to-maximize-profits-for-shareholders https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-co...
Cederfjard 5y ago
Were those expectations based on real observations, or did Google just get lucky with PR from the jump?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- vanusa 5y ago
  A real Googler can perhaps comment better than I. But in my hazy recollection, there did seem to be a time, long before the Andy Rubin payout, when the "Don't be evil" slogan was not quite the perverse caricature that it has become today.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    It felt good to work at google up until about the time of the social debacle (starting with the cancellation of GOogle reader and ending with Larry Page handing CEO over to Sundar because Page finally realized he was a terrible leader). But let's be honest, Google was an Ads company that happened to run a Search website to attract traffic since ~2000.
    - incomplete 5y ago
      during my time there, we had a saying: "what ads wants, ads gets". anyways, IMHO, the beginnings of the end were: * when google search first landed in china * the initial few mass hiring events (2005-2008) * when they cancelled "social TGIFs" (TGIFs that your non-google friends could attend). i think this was 2008? the whole social debacle was just evidence that google had already lost that fight years previously...
  - gaganyaan 5y ago
    Can't speak to internally, but public perception used to be very friendly to google. Relevant xkcd comic: https://xkcd.com/792/ https://xkcd.com/792/
- reaperducer 5y ago
geodel 5y ago
Sure, but to think only Google changed and employees and society at large did not seems untrue to me. Similarly it is difficult for me to see that Google is cause of all these changes. Afterall there were thousands of employees who created this vast user tracking mechanism happily for more money. To think it is just Google CEO/Founders/Executives who forced this "Evil" stuff would be hilarious.
iso1210 5y ago
Their corporate motto is literally "Do Some Evil"

by vanusa 5y ago

_jal 5y ago

Google is a huge, public company. Any ideals that survived going public will slowly be ground out by repeated exposure to management consultants from McKinsey and the hordes of MBAs attracted to the smell of ibanker excitement. You can't go public, or become part of a public firm, and not become more like the rest of the big players.

poof131 5y ago
The rampant cynicism regarding corporations is increasingly unhelpful. We’ve had forty years of hands off antitrust regulation and enforcement. We’ve had a bifurcating justice system that doesn’t hold white collar criminals accountable. It hasn’t always been this way and doesn’t have to stay this way. For those interested in the challenges we’re facing with monopolies and individuals trying to effect change, I recommend Matt Stoller’s substack [1]. 1. https://mattstoller.substack.com/ https://mattstoller.substack.com/
- _jal 5y ago
  I love Matt. But tell me I'm wrong. Any proposed solution is going to have to explain how to change the very strong financial incentives that lead to people doing the same things over and over.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  I wouldn't call it cynicism, just being realistic. It is perfectly normal that a company, from the size to Amazon to sole proprietorship, tend to maximize profit - and one of the main ways is to minimize costs. I'm yet to see a single one that doesn't care about costs and survives. Now, there are different people, with varying morals. When they advance to major positions in a company, they make various decisions. Unfortunately, our culture rewards the actions and attitude of people like Gates who deliberately made many grey-area decisions that we might call "egoistic" or just plain "evil" if they were aimed at individuals, or like Bezos, who treats human beings in his warehouses like cattle. So I'm sorry, we are not the ones being cynical here.
- javajosh 5y ago
  It seems every individual has their own process of understanding power, and cynicism is a middle stage. It comes after the beginning stage, the one we learn as kids, that is idealized and fair. This stage is the most important because it defines how things should be. Then, when you start out in the real world, you find out how things really are, and its painful, and that's the value of cynicism: it prevents the pain of disenchantment by pre-disenchanting you about everything. The third stage seems to be surprisingly rare, as most people either get stuck in stage 1, existing in a kind of shared delusion that all things are fine, despite the evidence that some aren't, or in stage 2, that all things are falling apart, despite evidence that some aren't. Stage 3 reconciles the previous stages, first by zooming out and seeing how transient and precious life is, civilization is, and how in this perspective, power is itself rather silly. There have been great kingdoms, entire societies, that have arisen and died, even in our brief recorded history. Lowering the stakes like this lets us relax and remember: nothing is forever. No law lasts forever, almost everything we try is an experiment, and it may fail. Armed with a profound knowledge of the absurdity of our large-scale situation, now we can zoom in and do our judging, knowing properly how ignorant we are, how ignorant the actors are, the abuser and victim alike. And we can begin to see opportunities for change. Small scale stuff, firing that abusive person, or even lightweight activism where you change something about your behavior to change things, if only a little. You are not going to have the grand-slam insight that fixes everything, or anything. Such an insight doesn't exist - or maybe it can, but it cannot be transmitted without great care, which presupposes a society that supports transmitting delicate ideas, which is already a society that is functioning pretty well. Essentially your comment is stage 3, because you remind the reader of the essential mutability of the system, and zoom out and show how its changed, and that there is every possibility of changing back to an earlier state where antitrust was actively enforced (read: successful antitrust enforcement gave political juice). If I could wish a thing into existence, it would be to engender a feeling of lightness to political discussion that comes from realizing this is all an experiment, nothing is written in stone, and we should feel free to try new things, knowing that they might not work, that real lives will be harmed when those experiments fail, but we also get good data about it for future decisions, so it comes out in the wash.
- caconym_ 5y ago
  Until we have a government willing and able to rein in the excesses of corporations, realism is going to look a lot like cynicism. I'm not an anti-capitalist, and I don't expect such a government to just fall into my lap without a Herculean effort on the part of somebody, but I don't see any point in sugarcoating the current state of affairs. Corporations and other wealthy interests aren't just a symptom of our current malaise—they're a direct contributor to it.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

If they're running this kinda psyops against their own employees imagine what's being done to the general public.

brightstep 5y ago

Unions reduce profits by giving employees a voice to protect themselves, demand the compensation they deserve, etc. It's therefore inevitable that corporations (Google, FAANG, or any others) will try to preempt or destroy them. It is their duty to shareholders.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pjmlp 5y ago
Thankfully there are countries where whatever corporations think is against union law.
drunkpotato 5y ago
It's a common trope to say it's their duty to shareholders, but it's not. Their duty is to be diligent and transparent to their shareholders, but not to pursue short-term profits at any and all costs no matter what. Specifically, there is no legal requirement or duty for companies to be anti-union.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  You're technically right, but don't the mechanisms strongly encourage it?
headmelted 5y ago
This is downvoted, I assume because people are maybe disagreeing with the principle rather than the validity of what you said. A lot of large companies clearly do look at unions as something that forces them to pay more compensation for less work, which they'd have to justify to shareholders and the board. Even if the board would be cool with it, and they could make it fly with shareholders, leadership bonuses and stock grants are tied to performance. I really don't see where this is an incorrect statement to make.
- pwinnski 5y ago
  "It is their duty to shareholders" is a factually-incorrect statement.[0] That piece of misinformation needs to die out. 0. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-companies-legally-obligated-to-maximize-profits-for-shareholders https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-co...

Cederfjard 5y ago

Were those expectations based on real observations, or did Google just get lucky with PR from the jump?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
vanusa 5y ago
A real Googler can perhaps comment better than I. But in my hazy recollection, there did seem to be a time, long before the Andy Rubin payout, when the "Don't be evil" slogan was not quite the perverse caricature that it has become today.
- dekhn 5y ago
  It felt good to work at google up until about the time of the social debacle (starting with the cancellation of GOogle reader and ending with Larry Page handing CEO over to Sundar because Page finally realized he was a terrible leader). But let's be honest, Google was an Ads company that happened to run a Search website to attract traffic since ~2000.
  - incomplete 5y ago
    during my time there, we had a saying: "what ads wants, ads gets". anyways, IMHO, the beginnings of the end were: * when google search first landed in china * the initial few mass hiring events (2005-2008) * when they cancelled "social TGIFs" (TGIFs that your non-google friends could attend). i think this was 2008? the whole social debacle was just evidence that google had already lost that fight years previously...
- gaganyaan 5y ago
  Can't speak to internally, but public perception used to be very friendly to google. Relevant xkcd comic: https://xkcd.com/792/ https://xkcd.com/792/
reaperducer 5y ago

geodel 5y ago

Sure, but to think only Google changed and employees and society at large did not seems untrue to me. Similarly it is difficult for me to see that Google is cause of all these changes. Afterall there were thousands of employees who created this vast user tracking mechanism happily for more money. To think it is just Google CEO/Founders/Executives who forced this "Evil" stuff would be hilarious.

iso1210 5y ago

Their corporate motto is literally "Do Some Evil"