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I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

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Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#101

Post by logicIsTruth »

kevingadd wrote: post #34
suddenexample wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always a bit taken aback by the heat that Google gets for even thinking about breaking into the Chinese market. Microsoft is in China and has active US military contracts. Apple is in China. Yet it's Google that gets the bad rap for trying to get into China and then ultimately turning down billions of dollars in revenue and data.

It's viewed as a betrayal of whatever ethical/moral core Google claimed to have originally, at least by employees and customers who bought into the hype early on and didn't realize that Google is ultimately just another big tech company with shareholders. As a former employee it never really surprised me that the company would want to move back into China, but it did surprise me a bit that they were doing so under he…

Fair point. I used to see Google as the good guy.

Working there seemed to be Good.

Where as it was obvious with Apple's anti competitive policies, they'd be evil/corrupt. When they ban Apps, I don't bat an eye anymore.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#102

Post by JumpCrisscross »

virtuous_signal wrote: post #10

I don't have firsthand knowledge, but my conjecture is that the old Google probably had a significant % of employees who held the belief "We shouldn't censor for China, even if that makes us lose money". But over a period of years, whatever they selected for in hiring led to enough people joining, who don't give a damn about human rights in China, so the censorship went ahead. The only thing that stopped it was bad p…

> whatever they selected for in hiring

Status seeking. Google has become the safe, secure job for people with low risk tolerance. That personality has predictable effects in any bureaucracy.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#103

Post by catalogia »

nickv wrote: post #5

Google, in my mind, is the quintessential "You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain" story. (To be fair, since this all is subjective, I do believe Google 2009 would consider this behavior counter to it's values and the values of the people it attracted.) The question I have is are there ways to stay true to values (which in some cases might be in direct opposition to growth a…

Google has been an advertising company since when, 2000? I think it was naive for any of us to expect an advertising company to be an ethical company. Live and learn..

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#104

Post by awb »

virtuous_signal wrote: post #10

I don't have firsthand knowledge, but my conjecture is that the old Google probably had a significant % of employees who held the belief "We shouldn't censor for China, even if that makes us lose money". But over a period of years, whatever they selected for in hiring led to enough people joining, who don't give a damn about human rights in China, so the censorship went ahead. The only thing that stopped it was bad p…

> "We shouldn't censor for China, even if that makes us lose money"

Back in 2010 there were many other opportunities to grow the company. The bigger you get the harder it is to grow.

Playing ball with China becomes one of the easier ways to keep growing once you reach a certain size. The NBA did the same thing after they saturated the US market.

I'm sure many execs have performance incentives / stock options that caused the shift in policy.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#105

Post by toastercat »

trevor-e wrote: post #37
izacus wrote: post #12

This is a repost of an article with 300 comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21935446

And this one doesn't even link to the Medium article, it's some other site that "sources" from it and doesn't even show the author's name. What's the point of write.as?

write.as can be used as a blog platform, or be used to write one-off, anonymous pieces of text.

In this case, I think OP was trying to improve the readability of the original article by using write.as as opposed to linking directly to Medium (which is notorious for its intrusiveness).

I think outline is better suited for these purposes, though, I typically just use Pocket or Firefox's built-in readability feature: https://outline.com/Xbykpn

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#106

Post by hinkley »

throwlaplace wrote: post #31
suddenexample wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always a bit taken aback by the heat that Google gets for even thinking about breaking into the Chinese market. Microsoft is in China and has active US military contracts. Apple is in China. Yet it's Google that gets the bad rap for trying to get into China and then ultimately turning down billions of dollars in revenue and data.

that's because google won over hearts and minds with "do no evil" so people feel betrayed because they invested themselves in the ideology of the company. it's mostly their fault for taking branding seriously.

People might vaguely dislike you for ambiguous reasons if you are an underachiever, but get them excited about things you can’t actually accomplish and they start to know exactly what they don’t like about you.

I’ve had a boss who tried to give out rewards to people and announced them without possessing them, and we had to harass him to get them. By the time they were delivered it felt like we’d earned them a second time, completely undermining whatever message he was trying to send.

The first “idiot” I worked for has the honor of my best anecdote for underestimating work and would pull this stunt where we could “go home early if we get everything done” on random Friday’s. On average we left an hour later on these days than on a typical Friday. The last time he tried this the entire team shot daggers at him and wandered back to their desks.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#107

Post by wsetchell »

philsnow wrote: post #93
wsetchell wrote: post #59

Requiring every product team to go through a central human rights review seems like a bad idea. Not only would it be expensive (new overhead for lots of product teams), it would be counter productive. Today the product leaders are accountable for the impact of their decisions, since they are the only ones who are making them. If there's a central decision committee, the product leaders would be able abdicate their re…

Google had this, at least around 2010. Product teams would have to get the go-ahead from a bunch of interested parties like legal, security, internationalization, etc. Each of those parties controlled a "launch bit" (literally a checkbox) for each product launch.

Yeah I was there during that time too. Chasing down launchcal bits was really expensive.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#108

Post by awb »

song wrote: post #78
Aperocky wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ethical sense Define that. For regular people in China, does the addition of Google with some censorship make their life better? Does it improve information flow over existing domestic search engines? I think the answer is obvious. People subscribe to overly simplistic thinking - if something is not perfect, it must be the worst. I see a lot of people promoting sanctions on a country because of government. Who gets…

Back when I lived in China, I used to think that having Google in China even with censorship was better than not having Google at all. But, this was also because back then, they did have a notice saying that some of the results had been censored. Back then, it felt to me to be an interesting compromise. What does scare me though, is that by accepting censorship, it normalizes it and weakens the position of any compan…

Do the majority of people living in China know about / care about censorship? Curious if information was being censored how you'd even know.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#109

Post by mrtksn »

virtuous_signal wrote: post #10

I don't have firsthand knowledge, but my conjecture is that the old Google probably had a significant % of employees who held the belief "We shouldn't censor for China, even if that makes us lose money". But over a period of years, whatever they selected for in hiring led to enough people joining, who don't give a damn about human rights in China, so the censorship went ahead. The only thing that stopped it was bad p…

And the change is probably for the better. I loved what the US ideals used to stand for but how ethical is to impose US ethics or laws on other countries even if it was possible? The Internet is no longer this network of bright individuals, it's part of society's fabric.

In a few years, the US understanding of morality might change to Christian fundamentalism, gun culture, anti-vaxxing, respect to the authority, anti-euro and so on and the US might differentiate even from the UK in many aspects and fall in odds even with Western Europe.

Would it be expected that the employee's rally for these causes too and try to overcome some German vaccination laws? If the new cool becomes Mormonism, should employees make sure that the message of the Mormons must be delivered in Turkey?

Sure, my examples are extremely exaggregated but winds are blowing in different directions in every part of the world and I would prefer if the companies don't pick sides here. Not censoring Google doesn't change a thing in China because the problem is not that the locals in China are looking into these things but couldn't find info due to the censorship.

For these tech giants, I think, is enough if they don't turn into a tool for control and surveillance. Serve the censored search results, show your ads and make your money, obey the local laws and Just don't be enablers for oppression. There's a difference between limiting your product to obey the law and gathering list of people for persecution.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#110

Post by criddell »

virtuous_signal wrote: post #10

I don't have firsthand knowledge, but my conjecture is that the old Google probably had a significant % of employees who held the belief "We shouldn't censor for China, even if that makes us lose money". But over a period of years, whatever they selected for in hiring led to enough people joining, who don't give a damn about human rights in China, so the censorship went ahead. The only thing that stopped it was bad p…

> led to enough people joining, who don't give a damn about human rights in China

The UN lists privacy as a human right. The entire company is built on violating human rights at scale no matter where those people reside.

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