[liberationtech] Google Appears Ready to Crack Down on Employee Activism

[Adrien Luxey]

I'll add another reminder of Google's inception to the list. It's better
to laugh at it:

The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine <The anatomy
of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine>, Sergey Brin & Larry
Page (Google's founders), 1998, in Appendix A "Advertising and Mixed
Motives":

    we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently
    biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the
    consumers. [...]

    Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to
    provide poor quality search results. [...] In general, it could be
    argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search
    engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer
    to find what they want. This of course erodes the advertising
    supported business model of the existing search engines. However,
    there will always be money from advertisers who want a customer to
    switch products, or have something that is genuinely new. But we
    believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that
    it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is
    transparent and in the academic realm.

It's interesting to see how the explosion of the dot-com bubble and the
push for profitability from VC investors drove Google to start doing
advertising. Then, as they witnessed the potential of their user logs,
they put them to use to "improve" advertising and earn market shares. In
the meantime, they broke their prime contract with their users.

I'll add a quote about the topic, from Shoshana Zuboff in "The Age of
Surveillance Capitalism", that I find hopeful:

    Surveillance capitalism [Google's business model] was invented by a
    specific group of human beings in a specific time and place. It is
    not an inherent result of digital technology, nor is it a necessary
    expression of information capitalism. It was intentionally
    constructed at a moment in history, in much the same way that the
    engineers and tinkerers at the Ford Motor Company invented mass
    production in the Detroit of 1913.

We could potentially find righteous business models for the information
era. It's /just/ a matter of inventing them, and allowing them to take off.
I wish us luck!

Adrien

On 22/11/2019 09:00, Mark @ OC wrote:
> Thanks for the Nostalgic reminder .. 
>
>> On 22 Nov 2019, at 04:44, Renee Lloyd <reneelloyd at mac.com
>> <mailto:reneelloyd at mac.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Wow.  Read this and immediately went back and read their S-1 filing
>> when they went public in 2004.   In the letter from the founders,
>> Larry and Sergey write:
>>
>>  
>>
>> “GOOGLERS
>>
>>  
>>
>> /Our employees, who have named themselves Googlers, are everything.
>> Google is organized around the ability to attract and leverage the
>> talent of exceptional technologists and business people. We have been
>> lucky to recruit many creative, principled and hard working stars. We
>> hope to recruit many more in the future. We will reward and treat
>> them well. /
>>
>>  
>>
>> We provide many unusual benefits for our employees, including meals
>> free of charge, doctors and washing machines. We are careful to
>> consider the long term advantages to the company of these benefits.
>> Expect us to add benefits rather than pare them down over time. We
>> believe it is easy to be penny wise and pound foolish with respect to
>> benefits that can save employees considerable time and improve their
>> health and productivity. 
>>
>>  
>>
>> The significant employee ownership of Google has made us what we are
>> today. Because of our employee talent, Google is doing exciting work
>> in nearly every area of computer science. We are in a very
>> competitive industry where the quality of our product is paramount.
>> Talented people are attracted to Google because we empower them to
>> change the world; Google has large computational resources and
>> distribution that enables individuals to make a difference. Our main
>> benefit is a workplace with important projects, where employees can
>> contribute and grow. We are focused on providing an environment where
>> talented, hard working people are rewarded for their contributions to
>> Google and for making the world a better place. “
>>
>>
>>  
>>
>> This was followed by ‘Don’t Be Evil”.   
>>
>>
>> Attached link to Google S-1 in case any of you folks want to read it.  
>>
>> https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312504073639/ds1.htm
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>>> On Nov 21, 2019, at 11:00 PM, Yosem Companys <ycompanys at gmail.com
>>> <mailto:ycompanys at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> 
>>> As it deals with worker accusations that it has retaliated against
>>> organizers of a global walkout and cracked down on dissent inside
>>> the country, Google has hired a consulting firm with a union-busting
>>> reputation to advise management. The New York Times reports that IRI
>>> Consultants apparently works frequently for hospitals and other
>>> healthcare organizations and boasts of its “union vulnerability
>>> assessments” and success in helping a national healthcare company
>>> persuade employees to avoid a union election. Google’s hiring of IRI
>>> is further evidence of a feud between company management and a group
>>> of activist employees that have pushed the limits of the company’s
>>> traditionally transparent, worker-friendly reputation. The hiring
>>> was a surprising turn in the Silicon Valley culture where union
>>> organization and labor unrest have been rare because employees have
>>> been generally well-paid and treated well. Google employees around
>>> the world walked out last fall in protest of the company’s handling
>>> of sexual abuse complaints, while the free-wheeling discussion
>>> boards that have defined Google’s culture have increasingly turned
>>> into contentious debates over politics or company policies.
>>>
>>> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/technology/Google-union-consultant.html  
>>> -- 
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