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Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

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Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#31

Post by JadeNB »

dleslie wrote: post #23

While looking at the tables of good versus bad phrasing I couldn't shake the feeling that I was reading something not so dissimilar to how leaders of organized crime historically avoided prosecution. By not naming the crime, by speaking about it indirectly and with softer language, they hoped to invigorate doubt in a hypothetical jury. It's a method of avoiding responsibility oft credited to Henry II, who stated off-…

Or the earlier example "Edwardum occidere nolite timere bonum est" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sen...).

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#32

Post by titzer »

skybrian wrote: post #8

This is about being careful what you put in writing, because the discovery process for lawsuits will find your carelessly written email and opposing lawyers will take it out of context, and do you want to end up in court years later explaining what you meant? Google has so many employees that they need training to limit the damage from random chatter and speculation. It’s more cumbersome to have to talk about some th…

They also have a corporate email policy where mails get auto-deleted after 18 months, unless you apply labels or are on a litigation hold (which would make such policy completely illegal). The email policy has no other purpose than to limit legal exposure. There is no legitimate business reason for that policy. In fact, it actively harms institutional memory and is frankly Orwellian, IMHO.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#33

Post by kyrra »

refenestrator wrote: post #22
sa1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not be intended to limit thought, just to avoid liability, but does it limit thought anyway?

Working there in the first place limits thought. Nobody wants to think of themselves as part of the problem. The language, at best, just makes the cognitive dissonance a little easier.

Googler, opinion is my own.

When I started at Google in 2015, in my first week here chatting with some peers, some of them were complaining about some of our policies around Android and that they much preferred Apple (the person didn't work anywhere near Android, but was complaining about it more as a user).

There are many people at Google that have issues with various parts of Google's businesses. Some are more vocal about it than others. One great example was Brad Fitzpatrick complaining about the first-gen Nest smoke alarms (2015): https://twitter.com/bradfitz/status/566072337020112896

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#34

Post by zepto »

skybrian wrote: post #8

This is about being careful what you put in writing, because the discovery process for lawsuits will find your carelessly written email and opposing lawyers will take it out of context, and do you want to end up in court years later explaining what you meant? Google has so many employees that they need training to limit the damage from random chatter and speculation. It’s more cumbersome to have to talk about some th…

Why not both?

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#35

Post by marcus_holmes »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #7

Forget about "competition" and "who provides the service" for just a moment. (I'll return to them below.) I'm saying all of this as someone who doesn't use Google search . I would like to see more competition in search engines. But anyone seeking to work in that space needs to think about how users actually use search engines, and stop thinking in the conceptual model of "finding sites for the given search terms". "6…

I read a certain amount of entitlement in TFA too. Like "I deserve to have my site on the front page of Google, rather than its paid advertisers or its own pages".

Why? This isn't a government-provided public service. It's a commercial product. Why should they direct traffic to your site for free? They, like everyone else, walk the line between providing an excellent product for customers and creating revenue for shareholders.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Google since they stopped not being evil. But I'm not sure that having a competing set of search engines would solve the author's problem - they would be writing passionate blog posts about "why can't we have a single set of SEO rules so I can get my site to the front page of all of them with no hassle?"

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#36

Post by minsc__and__boo »

titzer wrote: post #32
skybrian wrote: post #8

This is about being careful what you put in writing, because the discovery process for lawsuits will find your carelessly written email and opposing lawyers will take it out of context, and do you want to end up in court years later explaining what you meant? Google has so many employees that they need training to limit the damage from random chatter and speculation. It’s more cumbersome to have to talk about some th…

They also have a corporate email policy where mails get auto-deleted after 18 months, unless you apply labels or are on a litigation hold (which would make such policy completely illegal). The email policy has no other purpose than to limit legal exposure. There is no legitimate business reason for that policy. In fact, it actively harms institutional memory and is frankly Orwellian, IMHO.

That's not just Google though. Most companies have an email deletion policy that auto-deletes emails after a certain about of time, on the premise that they eventually lose all value and only pose a potential liability and litigation risk.

Even U.S. government officials have used private email servers to avoid having to serve them up via requests.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#37

Post by ChrisLomont »

titzer wrote: post #32
skybrian wrote: post #8

This is about being careful what you put in writing, because the discovery process for lawsuits will find your carelessly written email and opposing lawyers will take it out of context, and do you want to end up in court years later explaining what you meant? Google has so many employees that they need training to limit the damage from random chatter and speculation. It’s more cumbersome to have to talk about some th…

They also have a corporate email policy where mails get auto-deleted after 18 months, unless you apply labels or are on a litigation hold (which would make such policy completely illegal). The email policy has no other purpose than to limit legal exposure. There is no legitimate business reason for that policy. In fact, it actively harms institutional memory and is frankly Orwellian, IMHO.

>There is no legitimate business reason for that policy.

You already completely answered the perfectly standard and reasonable business reason: "to limit legal exposure. "

In fact, this legitimate business reason is 100% the reason for the policy. Increasing legal exposure for no reason is a bad idea, for companies and for individuals.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#38

Post by gumby »

titzer wrote: post #32
skybrian wrote: post #8

This is about being careful what you put in writing, because the discovery process for lawsuits will find your carelessly written email and opposing lawyers will take it out of context, and do you want to end up in court years later explaining what you meant? Google has so many employees that they need training to limit the damage from random chatter and speculation. It’s more cumbersome to have to talk about some th…

They also have a corporate email policy where mails get auto-deleted after 18 months, unless you apply labels or are on a litigation hold (which would make such policy completely illegal). The email policy has no other purpose than to limit legal exposure. There is no legitimate business reason for that policy. In fact, it actively harms institutional memory and is frankly Orwellian, IMHO.

> They also have a corporate email policy where mails get auto-deleted after 18 months

Eric Schmidt’s retention policy was 72 hours.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#39

Post by gowld »

gumby wrote: post #38
titzer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also have a corporate email policy where mails get auto-deleted after 18 months, unless you apply labels or are on a litigation hold (which would make such policy completely illegal). The email policy has no other purpose than to limit legal exposure. There is no legitimate business reason for that policy. In fact, it actively harms institutional memory and is frankly Orwellian, IMHO.

> They also have a corporate email policy where mails get auto-deleted after 18 months Eric Schmidt’s retention policy was 72 hours .

Before or after the High-Tech Employee Antitrust Settlement?

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#40

Post by [deleted] »

kyrra wrote: post #33
refenestrator wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working there in the first place limits thought. Nobody wants to think of themselves as part of the problem. The language, at best, just makes the cognitive dissonance a little easier.

Googler, opinion is my own. When I started at Google in 2015, in my first week here chatting with some peers, some of them were complaining about some of our policies around Android and that they much preferred Apple (the person didn't work anywhere near Android, but was complaining about it more as a user). There are many people at Google that have issues with various parts of Google's businesses. Some are more voca…

[deleted]
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