5 ms·

Who was asking for Woke Clippy? Is Google just bored and completely out of ideas? They seem increasingly disconnected with what their users actually want.

ayende 5y ago
I don't think I ever heard such an appropriate turn of phrase as "woke clippy", bravo!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mikkergp 5y ago
This is a popular tool in hiring for creating inclusive job descriptions. They're competing with companies like https://textio.com/ https://textio.com/
shadowgovt 5y ago
As a corporate culture, Google very much believes that if you ask the pre-car public what they want, they'd say "faster horses." ... and the willingness to take risks has historically served them pretty well.
- xen2xen1 5y ago
  But then Google gives you a car for free, then tells you it won't work in six months as they're canceling the service. Then they do it again, and again, and then no one wants a Google Car because it would just get canceled. The idea may have served them, the execution has not. This idea also translates into, "I know better than you what you want", which leads to not listening, not hearing, and ignoring your customer's needs, which is 199% Google.
- rurp 5y ago
  Google is an ad company whose core competency is getting lots people to click on links and buy things in exchange for money. They aren't exactly revolutionizing the world for good. Most of their innovative ideas get a splashy launch, middling support for a while, and then fizzle and/or get killed. The idea that there are millions of people who want to be told that motherboard is a dirty word every time they write it, but won't realize that desire until Google foists it on them, just strikes me as absurd.
- mrosett 5y ago
  Has it actually served them well? How many of Google’s controversial launches have turned out well? The YouTube acquisition was risky but that was more on the commercial side than on the product side. Apple is a different story of course.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    > Has it actually served them well? I feel like I can just gesture to the stock price and say "scoreboard," but that seems an unfair dismissal of the question. To expound on the topic a bit: I think when they were a smaller company it served them well consistently. Photos and Drive have become an enterprise cornerstone that supports their "light cloud" business space (quite a few people pay for that extra storage). Ads doesn't get talked about much, but the internal culture is very quick-innovate. Chrome went from being a wild idea to dominating the browser-share (and therefore giving Google a foot in the door on everyone's desktop computer), and then they parlayed that into a whole operating system play. Maps basically displaced most of the other players in that space and now competes with only a couple other contenders. I don't know if it will continue to do so now that they're an 800-lb gorilla in the room. They've certainly become more structurally conservative in the decade-plus since their founding. And I think their push into Cloud is putting pressure on them to act a lot more starched-collar; Enterprise is a different customer than they're used to (or comfortable with) dealing with.
cj 5y ago
You could look at Grammarly ($10+ billion dollar valuation) as evidence that there is a market for a tool/plugin that improves a user’s prose.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  Being told I use too many adjectives, my word choice is too heavy for my audience or that I used too many clauses is useful. Being passive-aggressively told "blacklist" is a no-no word is not. If you were really clever, you'd let the user set a "sensitivity" level for the writing from "normal human speak" to "corporate PR approved".
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    > you'd let the user set a "sensitivity" level for the writing But what if the company found out (and some employee leaked) the fact that most people deliberately set the default level to "normal human speak", and its campaign to replace and redefine words doesn't have any democratic legitimacy (let alone add any commercial value)?
  - nicbou 5y ago
    It depends on who you write for. As a non-native, non-American speaker, I'd be happy to know if I'm accidentally offending the people I'm writing to.
    - School-Cotton 5y ago
      That's the problem, though: the tool doesn't actually tell you that. The vast majority of Americans are not offended by words like "motherboard".
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - onepointsixC 5y ago
      But you aren't. Saying that "Motherboard" is offensive is basically misinformation.
mateo1 5y ago
If you read the article, it is clear who their prospective clients are. Big corporations pretending not to be racist. The next iteration will be a corporate-speak translator. As annoying as a woke clippy might be, at times I realize that we're lucky we don't live in a racist clippy alt reality. "Would you like to expand all mentions of "n-word"?"
- nullc 5y ago
  > I realize that we're lucky we don't live in a racist clippy alt reality If someone is being racist, wouldn't we arguably be better off if they used language that made it transparent to the reader-- rather than disguised it with the magic of search and replace? Real prejudice can't be erased by search and replace but it can be made more plausibly deniable.
  - mateo1 5y ago
    I completely agree, but people complain about anti-racism being "forced" onto them. While it's annoying when it's disingenuous and superficial as it usually is, it's still most likely better than having the establishment pushing for racism or openly accepting it.
nullc 5y ago
I think a grammar checker that warned about cross-cultural confusion would be pretty valuable in many writing contexts. It would best be constructed in that light: rather than moralizing or being activist just noting the fact that some text has a non-trivial odds of being understood in a way different than you likely intended. So for example, a writer of British English may want to be warned that "Bring me some fags when you return" may be misunderstood by American readers. This hypothetical checker might still warn you about "master"-- for example-- as there is now a sizable contingent that finds it controversial. ... but it would equally warn you against terms like "birthing person" which is considered by many to be biologically reductive to the point of being offensive, and by most people to be at least highly loaded. Such a tool would almost certainly not caution you against "landlord".
- canadaduane 5y ago
  Yes! This is much more interesting. Audience-based cultural & contextual awareness, rather than "assuming one global context" that takes the veneer of moral high ground. The former would be more helpful to a writer.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
Yeah, who asked for this? One would think they'd be trying to achieve feature parity with Microsoft Office instead.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  MS Word introduced a language censor like this recently (I've not seen it, only seen it announced at a workplace), so maybe they are following where MS leads?
  - jooperdoo 5y ago
    It’s far less intrusive. It will highlight fuck, for example, and tell you “that language might be offensive to readers.” It also flags on idioms that may come across poorly if you aren’t familiar with them/know English well. In a strongly multicultural company it’s been quite nice to have it catch a couple of my phrasings that wouldn’t track well to a non English speaker. I interpret Microsoft’s as helpful when considering ESL or other cultures. I interpret Google’s as straight woke. Very different products but you’re probably right that Microsoft led them there.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ayende 5y ago

I don't think I ever heard such an appropriate turn of phrase as "woke clippy", bravo!

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

mikkergp 5y ago

This is a popular tool in hiring for creating inclusive job descriptions. They're competing with companies like https://textio.com/ https://textio.com/

shadowgovt 5y ago

As a corporate culture, Google very much believes that if you ask the pre-car public what they want, they'd say "faster horses." ... and the willingness to take risks has historically served them pretty well.

xen2xen1 5y ago
But then Google gives you a car for free, then tells you it won't work in six months as they're canceling the service. Then they do it again, and again, and then no one wants a Google Car because it would just get canceled. The idea may have served them, the execution has not. This idea also translates into, "I know better than you what you want", which leads to not listening, not hearing, and ignoring your customer's needs, which is 199% Google.
rurp 5y ago
Google is an ad company whose core competency is getting lots people to click on links and buy things in exchange for money. They aren't exactly revolutionizing the world for good. Most of their innovative ideas get a splashy launch, middling support for a while, and then fizzle and/or get killed. The idea that there are millions of people who want to be told that motherboard is a dirty word every time they write it, but won't realize that desire until Google foists it on them, just strikes me as absurd.
mrosett 5y ago
Has it actually served them well? How many of Google’s controversial launches have turned out well? The YouTube acquisition was risky but that was more on the commercial side than on the product side. Apple is a different story of course.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  > Has it actually served them well? I feel like I can just gesture to the stock price and say "scoreboard," but that seems an unfair dismissal of the question. To expound on the topic a bit: I think when they were a smaller company it served them well consistently. Photos and Drive have become an enterprise cornerstone that supports their "light cloud" business space (quite a few people pay for that extra storage). Ads doesn't get talked about much, but the internal culture is very quick-innovate. Chrome went from being a wild idea to dominating the browser-share (and therefore giving Google a foot in the door on everyone's desktop computer), and then they parlayed that into a whole operating system play. Maps basically displaced most of the other players in that space and now competes with only a couple other contenders. I don't know if it will continue to do so now that they're an 800-lb gorilla in the room. They've certainly become more structurally conservative in the decade-plus since their founding. And I think their push into Cloud is putting pressure on them to act a lot more starched-collar; Enterprise is a different customer than they're used to (or comfortable with) dealing with.

cj 5y ago

You could look at Grammarly ($10+ billion dollar valuation) as evidence that there is a market for a tool/plugin that improves a user’s prose.

vorpalhex 5y ago
Being told I use too many adjectives, my word choice is too heavy for my audience or that I used too many clauses is useful. Being passive-aggressively told "blacklist" is a no-no word is not. If you were really clever, you'd let the user set a "sensitivity" level for the writing from "normal human speak" to "corporate PR approved".
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > you'd let the user set a "sensitivity" level for the writing But what if the company found out (and some employee leaked) the fact that most people deliberately set the default level to "normal human speak", and its campaign to replace and redefine words doesn't have any democratic legitimacy (let alone add any commercial value)?
- nicbou 5y ago
  It depends on who you write for. As a non-native, non-American speaker, I'd be happy to know if I'm accidentally offending the people I'm writing to.
  - School-Cotton 5y ago
    That's the problem, though: the tool doesn't actually tell you that. The vast majority of Americans are not offended by words like "motherboard".
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - onepointsixC 5y ago
    But you aren't. Saying that "Motherboard" is offensive is basically misinformation.

mateo1 5y ago

If you read the article, it is clear who their prospective clients are. Big corporations pretending not to be racist. The next iteration will be a corporate-speak translator. As annoying as a woke clippy might be, at times I realize that we're lucky we don't live in a racist clippy alt reality. "Would you like to expand all mentions of "n-word"?"

nullc 5y ago
> I realize that we're lucky we don't live in a racist clippy alt reality If someone is being racist, wouldn't we arguably be better off if they used language that made it transparent to the reader-- rather than disguised it with the magic of search and replace? Real prejudice can't be erased by search and replace but it can be made more plausibly deniable.
- mateo1 5y ago
  I completely agree, but people complain about anti-racism being "forced" onto them. While it's annoying when it's disingenuous and superficial as it usually is, it's still most likely better than having the establishment pushing for racism or openly accepting it.

nullc 5y ago

I think a grammar checker that warned about cross-cultural confusion would be pretty valuable in many writing contexts. It would best be constructed in that light: rather than moralizing or being activist just noting the fact that some text has a non-trivial odds of being understood in a way different than you likely intended. So for example, a writer of British English may want to be warned that "Bring me some fags when you return" may be misunderstood by American readers. This hypothetical checker might still warn you about "master"-- for example-- as there is now a sizable contingent that finds it controversial. ... but it would equally warn you against terms like "birthing person" which is considered by many to be biologically reductive to the point of being offensive, and by most people to be at least highly loaded. Such a tool would almost certainly not caution you against "landlord".

canadaduane 5y ago
Yes! This is much more interesting. Audience-based cultural & contextual awareness, rather than "assuming one global context" that takes the veneer of moral high ground. The former would be more helpful to a writer.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

Yeah, who asked for this? One would think they'd be trying to achieve feature parity with Microsoft Office instead.

pbhjpbhj 5y ago
MS Word introduced a language censor like this recently (I've not seen it, only seen it announced at a workplace), so maybe they are following where MS leads?
- jooperdoo 5y ago
  It’s far less intrusive. It will highlight fuck, for example, and tell you “that language might be offensive to readers.” It also flags on idioms that may come across poorly if you aren’t familiar with them/know English well. In a strongly multicultural company it’s been quite nice to have it catch a couple of my phrasings that wouldn’t track well to a non English speaker. I interpret Microsoft’s as helpful when considering ESL or other cultures. I interpret Google’s as straight woke. Very different products but you’re probably right that Microsoft led them there.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]