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I agree that it's unlikely Google as a whole would decide to read/use confidential data. on the other hand, the idea that someone w/in Google might abuse their

I agree that it's unlikely Google as a whole would decide to read/use confidential data. on the other hand, the idea that someone w/in Google might abuse their position is completely plausible. if we know that people at the NSA were passing around phone sex calls by US troops, do you really want to keep trusting that no-one at Google will ever do anything problematic w/ yr data? edit: to be clear, I use Google services all the time & store a lot of confidential data w/ them. but there need to be institutional (whether at Google or outside it) safeguards that go beyond trusting a company as a whole to always behave in a way compatible w/ its own rational self-interest.

Amadou 13y ago
Given that Google has a VC arm, I am stunned every time I run into a VC who uses gmail and other google-hosted services as part of their business. They are handing their competition an enormous chunk of their business proprietary information and trusting them not to peek at it without even a contract. To me, that level of naivety with respect to operational security is just baffling. All it takes is one unscrupulous person in the right place at Google and those convenient, "free" services could end up costing millions. It isn't like the people in the finance industry have a reputation for being upstandingly moral either.
- ganeumann 13y ago
  For this to be a worry, every person up both branches of a very large hierarchical organization tree--all the way up to where a Google Ventures employee and a Gmail developer both report to the same person--would have to agree to it. Google Ventures, no matter how spectacularly they might do as VCs, will always be several orders of magnitude less important to Google than Gmail. Google Ventures invests $300 million per year. Say they are always, every year, one of the top VCs so they--every year--deliver 3x on the money invested a few years before. They are still delivering less than $1 billion, less than 2% of Google's revenue. In reality, it will probably be more like 1%, plus or minus 4%. And also, in reality, it won't be considered revenue, it will be Extraordinary Gains from Non-operational Events, or some such accounting gibberish, and nobody on Wall Street will give them any credit for it.
  - Amadou 13y ago
    For this to be a worry, every person up both branches of a very large hierarchical organization tree--all the way up to where a Google Ventures employee and a Gmail developer both report to the same person--would have to agree to it. That's ridiculous. The risk isn't institutionalized abuse, the threat is an unscrupulous guy in the Ventures group who has a buddy who works in the gmail (or other) groups. Calls him up one night and says, "Can you do me a big favor? Check out so-and-so and see what he's working on." It isn't about Google's bottom line on wall street, it is about an individual abusing access to further his own career.
    - ganeumann 13y ago
      You make the false assumption that people in different divisions of a very large company would be more likely to help each other outside of the corporate reward structure than they would be to help someone outside the company, who they might just happen to have personal or social obligations to. If there were an unscrupulous person in the gmail group, he would be more likely to break company policy (and, I think, the law) with someone who does not work for Google than with someone who does, unless it were motivated by someone up the chain at Google itself. Saying that someone at Gmail is sharing your secrets may be a worry. That they would share them with Google Ventures is far less likely than that they would share them with someone else entirely. And frankly, if someone were to try to profit from stolen information, they'd be looking at hedge fund manager emails and investment banker emails. The very slight edge you might get from seeing some VC's email is worth less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks, if you risk-adjust it and discount it back to the present.
      - Amadou 13y ago
        You make the false assumption that people in different divisions of a very large company I'm assuming that people within a company are more likely to know each other and know what areas they work on versus simply "working at google." They have all kinds of opportunities to rub shoulders - previous projects they've worked on together, company social events, even just riding the google bus to work each day. While outsiders are also a risk, working for the same company substantially increases the opportunities.
- giardini 13y ago
  You are correct about the "one unscrupulous person" but VCs are hardly significant when you consider other options. Every single aspect of business and government is susceptible to NSA snooping. Had I access and the lack of scruples, I'd much rather read selections from Goldman Sachs' gmail than any VC's; similarly I'd much rather listen to Obama's telephone calls than Paul Graham's. I'd much rather make my investments in the futures market based on e-mails from high-ranking officials in the DOD than on those from any social networking VC. I could make more money (or have more influence, etc.) that way. As you say, it takes only "one unscrupulous person". So how common is unscrupulous behavior among highly-trained and highly-screened sysadmins? My bet, no less than 5 in every 100 would be unscrupulous, at least 1 in 100 would be absolute psychopaths, and possibly 1 in 200 would be unscrupulous enough and have sufficient social/business skills to take it to the bank in a big way (I'm talking serious crime/spying/nation-selling). There may be "Snowdens" out there that we don't know about - persons who are now selling us (corporations, person, and nations) down the river for a few million dollars. The NSA has put the nation in a very precarious situation.
tripzilch 13y ago
> on the other hand, the idea that someone w/in Google might abuse their position is completely plausible. > if we know that people at the NSA were passing around phone sex calls by US troops, do you really want to keep trusting that no-one at Google will ever do anything problematic w/ yr data? Already happened: http://gawker.com/5638874/david-barksdale-wasnt-googles-first-spying-engineer http://gawker.com/5638874/david-barksdale-wasnt-googles-firs...
- batemanesque 13y ago
  exactly. fill the most solipsistic company in the world w/ self-exalting geeks & you're bound to get more than a few creeps who don't understand social boundaries.
TsiCClawOfLight 13y ago
You should all read "the silicon jungle". It's by an ex-googler, and it's amazing.
bsullivan01 13y ago
All it takes a few, not "Google as a whole." I am not a fan of Google, but I feel that in Larry Page's era few things are sacred when it comes to making money. Maybe a Googler decides to read some Goldman Sachs' trader emails, or Google in general can sell trend data. Who knows? They have (IMO) ruined search and destroying any trust in its fairness, yet they are a monopoly, have a lot of goodwill and nothing is happening. So far.

Amadou 13y ago

Given that Google has a VC arm, I am stunned every time I run into a VC who uses gmail and other google-hosted services as part of their business. They are handing their competition an enormous chunk of their business proprietary information and trusting them not to peek at it without even a contract. To me, that level of naivety with respect to operational security is just baffling. All it takes is one unscrupulous person in the right place at Google and those convenient, "free" services could end up costing millions. It isn't like the people in the finance industry have a reputation for being upstandingly moral either.

ganeumann 13y ago
For this to be a worry, every person up both branches of a very large hierarchical organization tree--all the way up to where a Google Ventures employee and a Gmail developer both report to the same person--would have to agree to it. Google Ventures, no matter how spectacularly they might do as VCs, will always be several orders of magnitude less important to Google than Gmail. Google Ventures invests $300 million per year. Say they are always, every year, one of the top VCs so they--every year--deliver 3x on the money invested a few years before. They are still delivering less than $1 billion, less than 2% of Google's revenue. In reality, it will probably be more like 1%, plus or minus 4%. And also, in reality, it won't be considered revenue, it will be Extraordinary Gains from Non-operational Events, or some such accounting gibberish, and nobody on Wall Street will give them any credit for it.
- Amadou 13y ago
  For this to be a worry, every person up both branches of a very large hierarchical organization tree--all the way up to where a Google Ventures employee and a Gmail developer both report to the same person--would have to agree to it. That's ridiculous. The risk isn't institutionalized abuse, the threat is an unscrupulous guy in the Ventures group who has a buddy who works in the gmail (or other) groups. Calls him up one night and says, "Can you do me a big favor? Check out so-and-so and see what he's working on." It isn't about Google's bottom line on wall street, it is about an individual abusing access to further his own career.
  - ganeumann 13y ago
    You make the false assumption that people in different divisions of a very large company would be more likely to help each other outside of the corporate reward structure than they would be to help someone outside the company, who they might just happen to have personal or social obligations to. If there were an unscrupulous person in the gmail group, he would be more likely to break company policy (and, I think, the law) with someone who does not work for Google than with someone who does, unless it were motivated by someone up the chain at Google itself. Saying that someone at Gmail is sharing your secrets may be a worry. That they would share them with Google Ventures is far less likely than that they would share them with someone else entirely. And frankly, if someone were to try to profit from stolen information, they'd be looking at hedge fund manager emails and investment banker emails. The very slight edge you might get from seeing some VC's email is worth less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks, if you risk-adjust it and discount it back to the present.
    - Amadou 13y ago
      You make the false assumption that people in different divisions of a very large company I'm assuming that people within a company are more likely to know each other and know what areas they work on versus simply "working at google." They have all kinds of opportunities to rub shoulders - previous projects they've worked on together, company social events, even just riding the google bus to work each day. While outsiders are also a risk, working for the same company substantially increases the opportunities.
giardini 13y ago
You are correct about the "one unscrupulous person" but VCs are hardly significant when you consider other options. Every single aspect of business and government is susceptible to NSA snooping. Had I access and the lack of scruples, I'd much rather read selections from Goldman Sachs' gmail than any VC's; similarly I'd much rather listen to Obama's telephone calls than Paul Graham's. I'd much rather make my investments in the futures market based on e-mails from high-ranking officials in the DOD than on those from any social networking VC. I could make more money (or have more influence, etc.) that way. As you say, it takes only "one unscrupulous person". So how common is unscrupulous behavior among highly-trained and highly-screened sysadmins? My bet, no less than 5 in every 100 would be unscrupulous, at least 1 in 100 would be absolute psychopaths, and possibly 1 in 200 would be unscrupulous enough and have sufficient social/business skills to take it to the bank in a big way (I'm talking serious crime/spying/nation-selling). There may be "Snowdens" out there that we don't know about - persons who are now selling us (corporations, person, and nations) down the river for a few million dollars. The NSA has put the nation in a very precarious situation.

tripzilch 13y ago

> on the other hand, the idea that someone w/in Google might abuse their position is completely plausible. > if we know that people at the NSA were passing around phone sex calls by US troops, do you really want to keep trusting that no-one at Google will ever do anything problematic w/ yr data? Already happened: http://gawker.com/5638874/david-barksdale-wasnt-googles-first-spying-engineer http://gawker.com/5638874/david-barksdale-wasnt-googles-firs...

batemanesque 13y ago
exactly. fill the most solipsistic company in the world w/ self-exalting geeks & you're bound to get more than a few creeps who don't understand social boundaries.

TsiCClawOfLight 13y ago

You should all read "the silicon jungle". It's by an ex-googler, and it's amazing.

bsullivan01 13y ago

All it takes a few, not "Google as a whole." I am not a fan of Google, but I feel that in Larry Page's era few things are sacred when it comes to making money. Maybe a Googler decides to read some Goldman Sachs' trader emails, or Google in general can sell trend data. Who knows? They have (IMO) ruined search and destroying any trust in its fairness, yet they are a monopoly, have a lot of goodwill and nothing is happening. So far.