241–250 of 309 posts
Thats not Googlespeak. Thats legal protection. Whenever a company is open to investigation you can bet emails will be searched and if something suggesting something borderline illegal is written there it can be used against you. A lot of companiea give such trainings to their employees.
This is such an uncharitable interpretation of the training materials. The material there is not saying "if you want to speak about things that raise antitrust concerns, use this coded language", it's saying "don't do these things, and just focus on building a good product". Like, the thing here that really boggles my mind: if the training materials had said literally the exact opposite of what they do: "crush the co…
Every now and then I'm reminded of a) how much of HN has never worked for a large company, and b) how unfamiliar much of HN is with common business and legal practices. Too many thought leaders masquerading as engineers.
This is such an uncharitable interpretation of the training materials. The material there is not saying "if you want to speak about things that raise antitrust concerns, use this coded language", it's saying "don't do these things, and just focus on building a good product". Like, the thing here that really boggles my mind: if the training materials had said literally the exact opposite of what they do: "crush the co…
Accusing interpretations of being "uncharitable" feels really odd when we're talking about communication training material. It's not some Slack thread taken out of context, we're reading quotes from reviewed and crafted material. Also I don't see how changing "Cut off competitors' access to target" to "Integrate target with Google" matches your idealistic view of "focus on our product; competition is good and okay".…
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Okay, but we can agree that IBM powered the holocaust, and that those tattoos on survivor’s arms represented the punch cards for IBM systems, right? Because really, when there’s a profit to be made, American companies are there to fill a “need”, right?
That's horrifying. I was not aware. The horror is hundreds of IBM employees were directly involved in extermination activities; literally maintaining tabulation machines on prem, as it were, in the camps. I hope every HN reader has the awareness and moral strength to resist, where the corporations are unable, the next time such à job comes. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/52879
This is such an uncharitable interpretation of the training materials. The material there is not saying "if you want to speak about things that raise antitrust concerns, use this coded language", it's saying "don't do these things, and just focus on building a good product". Like, the thing here that really boggles my mind: if the training materials had said literally the exact opposite of what they do: "crush the co…
If the material was written exactly the opposite, it'd almost make more sense, most companies want a high awareness of their market share... unless they're worried about being hit with an anti-trust case.
And so, when it comes to banning phrases like "crush the competition" it's not that rule alone which is worrying, it's the whole package.
Your argument is also a bit flawed, in that the alternative isn't training material that encourages talking about "crushing the competition". The realistic alternative is that the training material wouldn't have to mention it at all. Either because the company doesn't have a problem with that kind of culture, or because the company isn't close to being a monopoly, such that talking about "crushing the competition" would just be interpreted as healthy competitiveness.
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Monopolies in the long term tend to lead to higher prices because without good competition what’s the incentive to sell with low profit margins? So, sell cheap for years, kill any competition, then the market is yours and you can do whatever you want to the inevitable detriment of the consumer. The consumer also looses in monopolies.
But the complaints against apple have focused on things they do that at least too me seem helpful and a positive part of my experience with apple. I feel MUCH more comfortable spending money via apple then I do almost anywhere else. Software on the web - endless issues buying / refunding / renewing. And if I don't like apple (which only has like 15% market share) I can switch to any number of android phones. It's jus…
It took them ages to deal with kids making unauthorised in app purchases and AFAIK they still haven't dealt with scam apps and scam subscriptions ($150/year QR code scanning app).
Consumers would appreciate PWAs but it doesn't suit Apple's corporate strategy so they are poorly supported.
You can't pay through the Netflix or Kindle app due to their ridiculous rules.
They look for ways to keep market dominance and move into more markets and then they think about consumer benefits they can add on the side.
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"Orwellian" seems like a good fit for memory-holing people's communications.
At the same time the only apps I cannot select & copy any text from are YouTube and GoogleMaps. The comments people leave there are so valuable for Google?
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It sounds like German employees in Germany and it’s territories working for the german subsidiary did work for the German government yes, and after the war was declared they did some very shady stuff. Similarly American citizens working for German companies in America did work for the US government during the war. I don’t really see what’s surprising about any of this. The implication seems to be that the US director…
This comment is peak HN. Congratulations.
Sure, the US imprisoned its citizens of Japanese ethnicity during WWII, a practice approved by its highest court, but they would never imprison Jewish people just for their ethnicity, right?
When I was at IBM 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a monopoly, since there were plenty of competitors in the hardware space (HP, Sun, Dell, etc) and in the software space (Oracle, SAP, etc.) and in the Services space (Accenture, PwC, KPMG, etc.) employees still had to complete annual legal training that was very similar to what was described in the post. Any large company with half-way competent legal counsel is…