Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google responds to the Mocality blog post

plus.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 137 posts

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#91

Post by kanamekun »

brudgers wrote: post #31
Lewisham wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this was posted at 10:30 MTV time, so there wasn't enough time for head office in MTV to figure out what's gone on and what to do/say about it yet.

Having known people who work in PR, if something needs explaining at 2:30 am, the flacks are making their case, not sleeping.

Perhaps this is your intent, but I thought I'd mention that the word "flack" is considered a pejorative by many PR professionals: http://www.prnewsonline.com/prnewsblog/index.php/2008/10/15/...

This comment from the link above sums it up nicely: "I think it’s all a matter of context and intention. If someone who generally respects PR professionals uses the term “flack” informally (as I myself have done in a recent blog post), then I’m fine with it. If someone else is using the term as a derogatory remark to show lack of respect for the profession, then it makes me mad."

Just thought I'd share the above for any other HN readers. Using the word "flack" is seen by many PR professionals as a sign of disrespect.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#92

Post by pyre »

pork wrote: post #34
michaelcampbell wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google was basically phishing by pretending that they were partnered with Mocality. It's a bit disingenuous to equate some Google employees from doing this with Google as a company doing it. I could be very wrong here (and would be extraordinarily disappointed in the company if so), but I doubt this was a corporate-sanctioned activity.

> It's a bit disingenuous to equate some Google employees from doing this with Google as a company doing it. Um...no, it's not disingenuous at all .

This idea is the reason that employers want the ability to see all your private details on Facebook when making the hiring decision. Just sayin'.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#93

Post by ZenPsycho »

kanamekun wrote: post #91
brudgers wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having known people who work in PR, if something needs explaining at 2:30 am, the flacks are making their case, not sleeping.

Perhaps this is your intent, but I thought I'd mention that the word "flack" is considered a pejorative by many PR professionals: http://www.prnewsonline.com/prnewsblog/index.php/2008/10/15/... This comment from the link above sums it up nicely: "I think it’s all a matter of context and intention. If someone who generally respects PR professionals uses the term “flack” informally (as I myself have done in a recent bl…

Is there a context in which it is not seen as a sign of disrespect? Perhaps when someone on HN says "flack" the disrespect is entirely intentional.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#94

Post by ori_b »

awakeasleep wrote: post #89
yock wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. You can't draw an equals sign between two actions just because they sounds similar. One is a completely legal action by an employee in good standing. The other is a crime. They are not the same thing and should not be treated as such.

Yet they are both done for the profit of the company. What is the difference you see?

Are you sure? Are you sure that people working at Google didn't just do something for their own profit?

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#95

Post by Klinky »

derefr wrote: post #88
tripzilch wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following the same reasoning we shouldn't laud Google for all the great stuff they did either, like GMail, Search, etc. Sorry it's one or the other. I know I like to say, we're IT and if anything goes wrong it's not our fault, but if anything goes extremely well, we'll take the credit--but then I know I'm being facetious :)

> Following the same reasoning we shouldn't laud Google for all the great stuff they did either, like GMail, Search, etc. You know, why not think of Google (or Microsoft, or any other Zaibatsu-pretending-to-be-one-brand) as companies resident within a start-up incubator? Treating Google's Adsense team as the same "culture" as Google's Search team makes about as much sense as treating Sony Pictures as being the same c…

If YCombinator funded/supported say a company that allowed your house to get trashed with no reparations or attempt to make good, then yes I'd hold that against YCombinator. Ultimately Google Inc. is where the money funnels to & is ultimately responsible for it's subcultures.

This idea that Google can't be held responsible for bad employee behavior is borderline religious. Praise Google when it does something good, let Google off the hook when it does something bad.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#96

Post by waterlesscloud »

jrockway wrote: post #67
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't bother you if Google, the company, is committing crimes? The cost of innovation isn't becoming a crook.

No, some regular person at Google behaved unethically. If Google locked down their employees enough to prevent this (which I doubt is even possible), then they wouldn't be able to do anything good either. You're saying: one mistake in a tiny branch office, entire global company goes out of business.

So what you're saying is that this corporation is made up of people?

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#97

Post by shadowfox »

jrockway wrote: post #45
napierzaza wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I don't think they can spin it as a "rogue team" really. If it is a team inside Google. That's Google's fault. It doesn't matter whether it's Google's fault because they have poor oversight or too much freedom or because they hire people who are criminal.

Google is not 100% perfect. If things aren't broken, you're not trying hard enough to push the envelope. The cost of innovation is failure. In other words, this doesn't surprise me. And it doesn't bother me, either.

You know, up until this comment of yours, it hadn't bothered me that you were an employee of google defending their actions most of the time on HN. I still assumed you were being somewhat objective.

But I have finally lost that trust. It is extremely hard to believe your objectivity when you equate what happened with "pushing the envelope" and "innovation".

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#98

Post by yuhong »

rdouble wrote: post #24
kenjackson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope Google isn't that tone deaf. Jobs got a lot right, and one of them is at the VP-level you don't have excuses. The janitor can have excuses, but if this is under your watch -- it's under your watch. I felt like Google played dumb with the drug ads thing and didn't really hold people accountable (Page was hardly rebuked) -- here they need to come down hard to show that they're serious about "Don't be evil" -- or…

The problem runs deeper. Google hired a lot of creeps during their huge hiring sprees in the mid/late 2000s. Don't forget that Google has been the #1 job choice for MBA grads since around 2006. Their semi autistic hiring process gets people with high IQs but does nothing to weed out amoral weirdos or even just plain assholes. One reason I have never responded to their recruitment efforts is that every psycho I've wor…

BTW the person who posted this was Nelson Mattos.

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#99

Post by mvgoogler »

heresy wrote: post #86
jrockway wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetical: If an employee in McDonald's overcharges all the customers do you think that McDonald's/the franchisee is completely devoid of responsibility because it was "just an employee"? That's a good example. But there's a difference between harming your customers and harming your competitors. In the case of McDonalds' hypothetical actions, the solution is to give your customers their money back and a few free b…

It's fairly obvious what they should do: apologise publicly and to the people who they misrepresented themselves to. Not in the Anglosphere where the actual people affected will never know of their wrongdoing. Not throw their hands up in the air and blame human nature, sorry for the inconvenience. Every act like this where they do not take a principled stand, dilutes the value of that Don't Be Evil motto a little mor…

Can we get a little perspective? It's been less than a day since this came to light.

How about giving the people who are investigating a reasonable amount of time to investigate what happened, ferret out who is responsible and and figure out how best to move forward?

Re: Google responds to the Mocality blog post

#100

Post by nknight »

potatolicious wrote: post #84
jrockway wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should they do?

Well, hard to say seeing as how the jury's still out on exactly what happened. If it was a rogue team in Google, there are a few things that come to mind: - Google needs to refund all customers they acquired via this process and alert them that they were duped. - Google needs to call every single business that the rogue team called and inform of what happened, and that Google is not affiliated with Mocality in any wa…

Considering it's dead-stupid obvious to anyone with half a brain, what exactly makes you think Google isn't going to do everything you mention?
Post reply on HN