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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

#131

Post by Varriount »

williamDafoe wrote: post #124

This guy is no saint. He stayed for many years after the company became terminally infested by "greed is good" Wall Street Thinking. He was in the best position to see this, and yet he stayed until long after the scandals had all broken. No sympathy for this guy who is the pot calling the kettle black. ...

So which is better, to abandon ship at the first sign of trouble, or to attempt to correct things?

From what I can tell, he continually attempted to steer Google away from business in China, even after things started going downhill. To my mind, that takes quite a bit of bravery.

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

#132

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

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.

It's still the same from what I understand from my Googler friends.

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

#133

Post by president »

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…

Agreed and it's what I've been saying all along. This is what you get when your hiring is based solely on puzzles and algorithms. In all of the engineering interviews I've undertaken in the Bay Area in the last 10 years (a LOT), none focused on any aspect other than raw technical skill. Very little if any on soft skills, communication, ethics, etc. What happens when these guys get promoted into higher leadership roles over the years, you get a slow poisoning of company values and culture because many of these people don't know about anything other than coding.

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

#134

Post by warpdrive »

"I saw them(Don’t be evil) used to guide product designs that put the company’s success above a user’s privacy, such as during the development of Google’s ill-fated social network, Buzz"

Isn't it ironic that Buzz had major privacy issues - https://www.cnet.com/news/google-buzz-privacy-nightmare/

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

#135

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

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…

> The question I have is are there ways to stay true to values (which in some cases might be in direct opposition to growth and profit taking) with the way our society is structured?

If we assume that a company's[0] values are determined in part by whom it decides to hire, I'm not sure this could be done legally in the U.S...

In the U.S., in most cases it's illegal to consider a candidate's religious beliefs when making a hiring decision. In my experience, a person's values are closely related to their religious beliefs, so hiring based on "values" would invite lawsuits regarding religious discrimination.

[0] I'm only guessing what's meant by a company's values, in this context. I know "values" means for an individual person, but not for a collection of persons.

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

#136

Post by Seenso »

shadowgovt wrote: post #45
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…

Google hired a significant number of Chinese citizens and migrants who didn't leave China for political reasons. Not surprisingly, they tend not to see China's government policy as evil.

> Google hired a significant number of Chinese citizens and migrants who didn't leave China for political reasons. Not surprisingly, they tend not to see China's government policy as evil.

It takes years in the right environment for someone like that to start to think differently. All kinds of important facts and ideas were kept from them, much of it random things that don't come up often that they may not even realize.

For a less than unusual example: a lot of Chinese think the US never apologized for accidentally bombing the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Balkans conflict, but it did so, publicly: https://www.c-span.org/video/?123188-1/youth-violence-embass.... The Chinese government portrayed the bombing as a deliberate act, and used it to create a sense of nationalist outrage in the population. The apology didn't fit the narrative so it wasn't reported. How long would it take for someone whose views were shaped by things like that outrage to get exposed to the truth randomly, given how infrequently this event comes up?

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

#137

Post by xenospn »

Aperocky wrote: post #43
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…

> 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…

It won't improve the flow of information. It'll improve the flow of a huge amount of disinformation and help the Chinese government direct it more efficiently, while being able to claim nothing is censored because "See? Google is working now!".

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

#138

Post by gowld »

mrtksn wrote: post #109
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…

Human rights don't have national borders.

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

#140

Post by p49k »

izacus wrote: post #12

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

And that one was quickly hidden on page 4 or 5 despite older articles with far fewer votes being placed before it. Why?

It was the #1 story on page one, mentioned it to a colleague a few minutes later and he couldn’t even find it.

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