The Voice of Google
newyorker.com196 points by littlexsparkee 15 hours ago
196 points by littlexsparkee 15 hours ago
Google figured out how to create a classless suite of internet services for anyone on Earth with an internet connection to use. I struggle to see how this didn't meet their original goals, what people celebrated about Google, and what made Google such an attractive place for people like the author to work.
What's fascinating is that Google gets virtually zero recognition for this (Google services are largely taken for granted), and beyond that, Google is one of the most hated corporations for it.
So if we use Google as a case study for "progressive business", having mostly succeeded at giving the poorest people one Earth an equal product to the richest people on Earth, what is the takeaway?
> What's fascinating is that Google gets virtually zero recognition for this, and beyond that, Google is one of the most hated corporations for it.
You can both love and hate something at the same time. Humans have complexity and nuance, don't dismiss that.
It's also worth noting that complaints are more vocal than complements. If things are working well then it's usually quiet. Nothing to say. But when shit goes wrong people talk because they want it fixed. Don't let this bias fool you into thinking that appreciation isn't happening. Appreciation is generally silent while hatred is vocal. That's not isolated to the internet either
It's less a statement about the absolute hatred that Google gets, and more about Google using collected data to target you with ads is the most hated thing about Google (directly or indirectly).
Google pretty much figure out how to take an attribute that every human has (desire) and turn that into indefinite sustainable (and growing!) services for every living human no money required. Role the clock back 25 years and this idea is so powerful and utopian, no wonder Googlers were riding on top of the world. Anyone on Earth of any background and any wealth level will be able to have web search, e-mail, an office suite, maps, youtube, a blog, data storage, all the tools you need for productive online life, for free, for everyone. I cannot think of any business idea more progressive than that.
However, the point is that the above is inseparable from Google's data collection. There is no other solution to achieving the above. None. It's either data collection or pay walls. Walls that naturally run along the huge wealth divides globally, and leave behind those who need it most.
So I suppose at heart the question is: If free services for all humans and mass scale data collection are two sides of the same coin, is this something that we want or something we need to avoid?
(I know people are itching to call false-dichotomy, but lets be real, nothing in 25 years that isn't money-based or ad-based has gained meaningful VC money i.e. VCs dont buy into "donation based" models)
> I know people are itching to call false-dichotomy, but lets be real, nothing in 25 years that isn't money-based or ad-based has gained meaningful VC money i.e. VCs dont buy into "donation based" models
But I think you also glossed over the enshitification element. That greed optimization has shifted to become user hostile. There was a time when we could make great products and make good money at the same time. But we've moved to living in a world with oligarchs. They're pushed to make more money than they could ever possibly use (I don't mean need, I mean they couldn't spend it if they tried) because others get to ride their coat tails.
The economy was never a zero sum game. It's possible for everyone to get rich at the same time. You don't have to shit on the user to make a profit. I'll say that if a company is hostile to its users then that company is evil. Most companies, including Google, don't start that way. But being good doesn't mean you won't become evil tomorrow. And Google? They've abandoned nearly all the principles that they used to be praised for. I don't think the criticism is harsh. People are allowed to change their opinions about a company as that company changes its actions
Let's say you could calculate a good-evil score for every large corporation by netting the good they do against the evil they do.
I don't know if Google would be net-good or net-evil, but I'm pretty sure they would be far less evil than most of the other large corporations on that list.
Certainly less evil than Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Meta, JPMorgan Chase, UnitedHealth, Coca-Cola, Oracle, Palantir, Goldman Sachs, LVMH, McDonalds, etc.
But it's a paradox that on HN, Google gets far more hate than any of these.
Maybe HN is a weird combination of fatalistic and idealistic, where we assume any for-profit corporation with a do-gooder mission is lying about its mission to hide its essential evilness, while secretly hoping that maybe it really is possible to do good and do well at the same time.
For a while it seemed like Google's do-gooder mission was genuine. Unlike their less principled competition, Google refused to take money to influence search rankings. Google withdrew from mainland China rather than continue censoring search results there.
We secretly started to believe. But all the other compromises along the way felt like betrayals.
Google really is less evil, even today, but we hate them more because we dared to believe, and Google let us down.
I think the premise is wrong: I don't think Google is more hated than all of the organisations you list.
Within the tech world, I believe people generally dislike meta, Palantir, Oracle, and Microsoft more than Google.
Out in the real world, in the US at least I'd bet money that UnitedHealth must be more hated. And anyone with at least a modicum of rationality would probably dislike Big Oil and Big Junk Food more too?
---
That said, I think this is an excellent cautionary lesson:
> We secretly started to believe... ...we hate them more because we dared to believe, and Google let us down.
> Certainly less evil than Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Meta, JPMorgan Chase, UnitedHealth, Coca-Cola, Oracle, Palantir, Goldman Sachs, LVMH, McDonalds, etc.
Certainly… according to who? I think some of these companies are, certainly, less evil than Google
> McDonalds
McDonalds should start allowing full 50% off order discounts in exchange for customers opting-in to receiving custom-printed wrappers with hyperpersonalized advertising printed on-demand just for them.
Could they afford to do it? IDK, advertising is effective and seems like a big business.
I think with their McDonalds App discounts for more normal pricing (last I checked), they're half way there?
My Facebook account with no connections was created exclusively to log in for the 20% discount. Facebook is probably getting more out of this arrangement than McDonalds.
I do like that McDonalds employees call me Valued Customer instead of the Facebook Name, after enabling one of the app privacy settings.
For example, Oracle does evil to its customers and partners and competitors. But Google does evil to every human who uses their products. In my book that’s much worse.
> to every human who uses the internet
Google has a lot of control over the internet. They also track and profile people even if they never created a Google account.
It's one thing to do that to people who are users, it's another thing to secretly turn people into users
> But it's a paradox that on HN, Google gets far more hate than any of these.
There is no paradox. This is Hacker News. It's a site of by and for people in the tech industry. Of course Google's activities (good and bad) get far more attention than those of Chase, or Coca-Cola.
I certainly wouldn't agree that Google "gets far more hate" on HN than Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, or Palantir.
Google can do and has done a lot more harm than McDonalds or Coca-Cola.
They destroyed the open web (over and over - AMP, Manifest v2, etc. etc.), helped turned mobile computing into a rental / second-class citizen model, are ushering in identity tracking and attestation.
They pilfer the commons, unfairly monopolize, expand vertically and horizontally without bounds, make it impossible to compete, tax distribution every single way since they're the only set of rails, profit off of other people's copyrights and trademarks.
They even tried to hoard AI innovation, and it took employees leaving to set it free.
> The hate it's about what they did with the power they gained.
Which is???
Serve ads without selling data?
I'm not sure if y'all are aware, but CC companies sell your data. Your telecom provider sells your data. Banks sell your data.
Google figured out a system to sell access while keeping your privacy. And somehow they're more hated than people who just straight up give your data away.
If most people hate Google all this proves is that most people are retarded.
I share your sentiments re google exactly. But the credit card and banks point is also understated.
Google innovates. CCs are basically a monopoly/duopoly, a private tax on an economy where increasingly everyone uses credit for everything. They make money on these transaction costs and banks issuing them make money charging insane interest when your neighbors fall behind, trapping them in a debt cycle. And yes, your purchases get aggregated into data sales.
Have credit cards innovated? Has your bank innovated? At least with Google their services are largely good and they actually innovate at shocking scale. Especially if you are paying for their products it is hard to argue Drive or YouTube haven't gotten better. You're complaining about ads but you want YouTube to be free? Who is going to pay for it?
Meanwhile has your credit card gotten better? Why is the CEO of MasterCard making millions of dollars? If you had to pick the thing in your pocket that is preying on you and you pick your phone, you're not thinking clearly. The answer is your credit card.
> Serve ads without selling data?
> CC companies sell your data. Your telecom provider sells your data. Banks sell your data.
Look, I don't like that the banks and telecoms have as much data as they do, but let's be serious here, Google has some very serious data on people. Don't be so glib.
> Which is???
But what is the alternative, and why is it better?
An Apple-esque internet that gets you a full google-like suite of services, along with news and other general entertainment, all ad/tracking free, but for a cool $300/mo? User friendly, pro-consumer, but only for those who can afford it?
I genuinely struggle to say that a user friendly internet that cuts out 80% of the current global internet user base because they are too poor is a better system.
> But what is the alternative, and why is it better?
> An Apple-esque internet
> all ad/tracking free, but for a cool $300/mo? User friendly, pro-consumer, but only for those who can afford it?
> I genuinely struggle to say that a user friendly internet that cuts out 80% of the current global internet user base because they are too poor is a better system.
[0] Network effect has multiple meanings here and it often does hinder their goals.
[1] Well it's not like we can truly setup global mesh networks, but hey, maybe one day.
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oil-coined-carbon-footprints-to-blame-us-for-their-greed-keep-them-on-the-hook> Not even my telecom operator knows that!
They sure do and certainly know who is within 100ft of you at any given time.
Your telecom company can triangulate you through their towers, but they don't have access to your phone's WiFi antenna, bluetooth, NFC, nor GPS. Google and Apple have all of that. Snoop on what they're sniffing and I doubt you'll agree that the telecom companies comes anywhere near to what Google and Apple have.
> They sell data
Show me where I can buy it then?
Because I know where to buy CC data, for example...
> Not even my telecom operator knows that!
Lol: https://thingspace.verizon.com/services/hyper-precise-locati...
If it wasn't for Google (and ads), my bank might not have even considered selling my data.. They only sold the credit bureaus in the past, AFAIK. Now it's considered a "must have"..
Lol, traders and hedge funds are 100x more interested in the data banks have than advertisers.
> Google figured out a system to sell access while keeping your privacy.
This would be the new Google’s definition of privacy, ie. only you and Google have access to your private data.
The new Google does not, of course, have a word (nor hence the concept) of data to which Google does not have rightful access.
Well, they aren't hated for the tech they built, that is cool and easily appreciated.
People don't like google because they turned it into a way to sell people to others for a profit in essence. Over time more and more intrusive to the point where they are no longer worth any of the services they offer. Like a creepy stalker following you every where you go, at some point you need a restraining order.
Most people don't even realize the creepy stalker exists though.
> sell people to others for a profit in essence .... restraining order
If you have to make your point by exaggerated comparisons to slavery or analogies to safety concerns and scary crimes, then you should probably step back and re-evaluate.
Try to write true words in your comment and see where it leaves you. Google tracks you and sells ad-space to companies that are looking for profiles like your own.
Like they always have. They're an ad company. The "golden age" of Google was when almost all of their business was ads cause they didn't have cloud etc. I guess people are upset cause there are more ads than before, and employees miss it when money was free.
> People don't like google
I only wanted to clarify that you must have implied that this statement applies among people who don't like Google, but whatever their reasons, those people are few. In aggregate, Google has a strong reputation and is one of the most well-liked businesses on Earth. It is on par with Cheerios. Disliking Google for "creepy stalker" reasons is not a mainstream thing.
Your clarification aligns perfectly with the final statement in GPs comment. Most people do not realize the extent and invasiveness of googles voyeurism.
Wrong. Most people don't care and think it's a fair exchange. This trend of infantilizing people instead of acknowledging other adults may not share your perspective is pretty irritating.
People want free stuff. Most people understand their lives are boring and that really no one cares. Their "data" is only valuable in aggregate. In return they get "free" services. How does this betray anyone's understanding?
No one at Google is watching you have sex. They don't care. Your own government is more likely to spy on you in such a "voyeuristic" manner. Google doesn't give a shit. Have you been on the ad buying side? There are far more invasive data collectors than Google, delivering consumers far less utility. It seems like the only person not making the correct realizations here is you. People are told time and time again by people like you about how invasive Google is. Yet they keep using it.
What should we do, send them to your personally owned indoctrination camps? No one cares.
Believe people when they vote with their time and their wallet. You don't get to tell people what they think because in your mind they are insufficiently brainwashed. "Most people would agree with me if they knew what I knew" after repeated evidence to the contrary is akin to psychosis.
Ding ding ding. Google is only a few steps away from the "Orphan-Crushing Machine", or the pods that imprison/enslave people in The Matrix, because it is literally the hardware-software-businessmodel matrix which creates and maintains conditions of oppression through unprecedented surveillance and other late-stage capitalistic evils.
If the office software they created existed in a vacuum, it might be appreciated. But it is there as a honeypot to onboard people, particularly the most impoverished, into their dystopian hellscape. And I say that as a 20+ year user who, nevertheless, uses their stuff knowing all this, because it's often the best solution in a world of bad solutions.
> it is literally the hardware-software-businessmodel matrix which creates and maintains conditions of oppression through unprecedented surveillance and other late-stage capitalistic evils.
No, that would "literally" be Palantir. Like, literally literally, that's their actual business model: selling surveillance and murder drones to intelligence agencies.
The two are not mutually exclusive, but Google has been the dominant force in tech for decades and therefore has been very much an integrated part of Big Brother's operations for some time now. Palantir is, yes, more corrupt, but they're also the new kid on the block.
Anyway, both are true, and if I could wipe one off the face of the earth it would be Palantir.
In general, this is just the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics combined with armchair quarterbacking. Google’s services, like Amazon’s, create unbelievably large amounts of value for people of which these companies capture a tiny fraction.
However, these are fairly popular brands with positive associations for the majority of people. Online commentary is from a self-selected group and cynicism stands in as the poor man’s substitute for analysis.
First time I've heard somebody call recognizing the evils of ad tech cynicism.
Google is loved for the things they built that cause people to love Google (GMail, Search, Drive, K8s, Android, Patents, Books, Nest, Wave, Workspace, YouTube) and Google is hated for the things they built that cause people to hate Google (the targeted advertising money machine, Google+, the many negative second-order effects of their loved products). I don't see these two things being mutually exclusive. On balance, I think more people have a positive opinion of Google than do for Microsoft, Amazon, or Facebook.
Also, humans are a pretty tough audience when it comes to utilities, with that hedonistic adaptation and all. You don't see many people walking around waxing lyrical about the wonders of modern sanitation, water purification, and plumbing -- but people do complain about water bills.
Yes, both rich and poor people will use Google's free services. It's sort of like how a can of Coke is the same no matter who you are.
But also, Google sells plenty of "premium" products to people who are willing to pay, starting with YouTube premium. And I'm getting lots of upsells when using Google Meet these days.
What’s also fascinating is that such a company has zero provision for human-involved tech support…
If you can’t login, you’re screwed.
My library is free (to me), but I can still get someone to help me if the card doesn’t work…
> So if we use Google as a case study for "progressive business", having mostly succeeded at giving the poorest people one Earth an equal product to the richest people on Earth, what is the takeaway?
How should the people of Gaza thank Google for Google's Project Nimbus etc. targeting them for blockade starvation and bombings?
As Anatole France said - they have to work before the laws' majestic equality, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
Google refused to do contracts with the US military but was then fine doing them with Israel. Some of the original employees were pretty clear about their personal reasons for this.
This is how I feel about excel whenever someone dismisses msft. The ultimate software for the anyman.
They de-facto created a monopoly. You can reason that its services are useful, but without also pointing out that they established a de-facto monopoly, this "analysis" is very incomplete.
> what people celebrated about Google
When exactly? Google initially was not anywhere near as problematic as it is today. I don't see many celebrate Google these days.
> what made Google such an attractive place for people like the author to work.
Was it ever? It also feels it used to be more attractive in the past. Nowadays you do not see any such yubilant posts about Google anymore. People complain a lot more about Google.
> What's fascinating is that Google gets virtually zero recognition for this (Google services are largely taken for granted), and beyond that, Google is one of the most hated corporations for it.
That's also not true. Some of Google's service are still popular such as Google Maps. You see very little criticism about it. But in other parts, Google revealed how truly evil it is. Be it the fight against ublock origin or Google locking down Android or dominating the www via abusing adChromium. Nope, sorry, the criticism against Google is totally warranted. Years ago I did not understand the de-google movement. Now I am of the opposite opinion and even more extreme. I think Google has to be removed from this planet as entity. Someone needs to chop it up. The US courts are too corrupt and bribed to change anything. I think the people need to fix Google, by no longer using it. This is difficult, I get it; I am still using Google, such as youtube. That's actually my biggest use case of Google. The browser (thorium) is the second loophole here but in theory I could use firefox.
> So if we use Google as a case study for "progressive business", having mostly succeeded at giving the poorest people one Earth an equal product to the richest people on Earth, what is the takeaway?
That's like saying Al Capone is a saint. You try to connect evil with good. There is no connection here. Google remains an evil corporation even if it makes useful services. But it also kills existing services - look at the Google graveyard. Look how they crippled its search engine. Google pisses off people - why do you not see this? You basically wrote an eulogy for Google here. No specific criticism at all.
what monopoly did they create? it seems they have competitors in everything they do.
Ads, obviously.
I understand Meta has an ad business as well—but no one I know uses their sites.
Instagram makes ~$28/user/mo from ads, which is wild. They couldn't even sell a premium ad-free membership without losing money on those people. (Who the hell would pay $28/mo for instgram?)
I tried to verify that figure and I'm pretty sure you mean ~$28/user/year.
Instagram's global ad revenue ~$83.6B in 2025. [1]
Instagram passed 3 billion monthly active users in September 2025. [2]
$83.6B ÷ 3B ≈ $27.9 per user per year ≈ $2.30/month.
1: https://resourcera.com/data/social/instagram-revenue/
2: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/24/instagram-now-has-3-billion-...
> What's fascinating is that Google gets virtually zero recognition for this (Google services are largely taken for granted), and beyond that, Google is one of the most hated corporations for it.
I feel like this is some majorly false revisionist history. At least in my circles, Google was revered and lauded up until 2010-2012 or so, whenever enshittification started in earnest. And this isn't just some outsider opinion. Look at some of the original early Google communication where they highlighted how their ads were always separate and easily identifiable from organic results, and how that eroded over the years. Heck, there was a front page article today on NYTimes, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/technology/google-ai-open..., talking about how Google used to be an "open Internet champion" and is now an "AI gatekeeper". Google's corporate ethos from their early years is basically unrecognizable today, and that's why people hate them.
The hate towards Google only started picking up steam as they snowballed into deciding (like pretty much all corporate enterprises) that growth at all costs is the only purpose of corporations, and when they became the poster child (rightfully so IMO) for surveillance capitalism.
The New York Times is actually part of the reason why Google’s reputation went downhill. Somewhere around 2010–2015, the NYT and other traditional newspapers finally woke up and realized that their traditional job of disseminating information to the masses had been supplanted by a new generation of tech companies including Google and Meta. So the NYT and other newspapers soured their opinions around the time. If you read the NYT, just like many intellectuals do for priding themselves for reading a serious publication, your opinions of Google would have drastically changed around that timeframe too.
However among my circle of friends (who are in general not readers of the NYT), the main reason Google became hated was shutting down products (starting from Reader, culminating in Inbox) and launching duplicative products (how many chat apps did Google have). The hate had absolutely nothing to do with surveillance capitalism. If anything people hated Meta for that; Google’s role in surveillance capitalism was basically nil compared to Meta.
Off-topic somewhat, but NYT once tried to convince their readers to call Elizabeth Holmes "Liz" and not send her to jail after her fraud conviction. The implication being that it was a highly paid puff piece. They lost a lot of credibility with me that day.
- Shutting down products.
- Shutting down accounts with almost no way to recover them and nobody to talk to.
- Going back on promises of unlimited storage when you buy their products, then constantly nagging you about storage space.
- The worsening quality of search results.
- Cramming incorrect AI answers into the top of their search results, or pushing it in other products.
- Using their control over Chrome to try and end ad blocking.
- The wholesale enshittification and lobotomization of YouTube.
- They have $1800 phones they're putting restrictions around being able to run your own code on.
- The fact that when you search an app in the Play store, the first result is an ad for some other app.
- Their UIs is just death by 10,000 papercuts in general.
- Their engagement in politics, not just lobbying but a donation of $1 million to the inauguration fund for a wildly unpopular president.
[Modern] Google is a big company, with a lot of users, and more than enough problems for those users to eventually stumble into at least one thing that leaves a bad taste in their mouth.
> Google is one of the most hated corporations for it.
This is such a terminally online take. It's important to not look at the bubble you're in and get fooled into thinking it's a representative microcosm when it almost never is.
I'm reminded of when Quora was hyped up on HN and in Silicon Valley in general. VCs were waxing lyrical about how "everyone" they knew was using it but "everyone" here was "everyone they knew", which is a subset of "everyone in the VC/SV space".
Google is not hated by the general public. My basis for this is the 2025 Harris poll on company reputation [1].
[1]: https://www.axios.com/2025/05/20/axios-harris-poll-company-r...
1. Vocal minority will be, by definition, the loudest. And complainers/haters tend to be more vocal. Studies have looked at which emotions lead people to share, and outrage tops the list; satisfaction barely ranks.
2. Speaking of satisfaction, there is hedonic adaption to consider. None of us walk around day to day screaming, "Oh my god, airplanes! Computers! Tropical fruit! WiFi! Indoor plumbing!" We just acclimate, and it becomes background noise.
3. I think, culturally, there is just massive distrust for corporations. Look at any Hollywood movie or popular work of fiction. If there's a corporation, it's inherently evil, and helmed by some sort of sociopath who wants to harm as many people as possible.
Which product(s) are equal to the products richest people on earth use?
It should be read as the same product from google, not the same product across the market of products.
We can snag on technicalities like Pixel phones, yt premium, and gemini quotas, but by and large, a kid in the Indian slums is using the same Google suite as a house wife in the Hamptons.
OK sure, Google deserves credit for that.
On the other hand, they also directly contribute to the technical addiction and attention economy that has created more depression and a lower quality of life for most people on earth. Maybe google taking responsibility for that can help improve their reputation.
is the correct answer what you are saying though, to pretend this other bad thing hasn't happened and only say google can do good?
> that has created more depression and a lower quality of life for most people on earth.
Very strong claim. Any sources for the "most people on Earth" part?
Most people on earth: Let's just look at how many people use technology. How many use it? And how many are obviously also using it more than 4 hours/day to consume information in a fashion that doesnt' serve their health, connection or wellbeing?
Those statistics are widely known and accepted. Do you need me to provide evidence from that?
Yes, please point to the statistics showing that most people on Earth are depressed.
Google Maps, YouTube, Google Search, Google Docs, GMail and even Google phones.
Billionaires use Gmail alongside impoverished people across the world.
"Here at the phone company we serve everyone from presidents and kings to the scum of the earth"
Indeed. And “We don’t care, we don’t have to” is a good summary of Google as well.
Well, maybe because of the two ungrateful college students who dared to write in their essay the following notorious statement:
> We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.
I highly recommend you to blame these two guys for their lack of recognition of how great Google is, here is their name: Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page.
You do realize
> having mostly succeeded at giving the poorest people one Earth an equal product to the richest people on Earth
is equivalent in this scenario of saying:
> having mostly succeeded at exploiting the poorest people one Earth an equal amount to the richest people on Earth.
While the poorest people have less already, right?
When claire stopped writing the tgif emails I was very sad, among others I talked to. When I heard, years later, about all this bs she went through, it helped crack the illusion for me. So sad.
I can't help but see most of this as Claire using her gift of elegant prose and crafting narratives to retell a story of a prodigy that had a great product-market fit in the beginning then was unable to maintain relevancy while becoming bitter at the people around her. It must be so difficult to start out as a shining star then watch something you helped shape grow away from you. It looks like some powerful people at Google tried very hard to keep her with all these dramatic job changes. I always thought the walk-out seemed more dramatic and showy than people actually working for positive change (virtue signaling for their careers/to get their 5min), but I was very much on the outside. Seems hard all around.
Not sure it's still virtue signaling when you sacrifice your job. That might actually be virtue.
I wonder though, what counts as actual virtue for some people.
It was sanctioned by the CEO. How much was their job actually at risk?
First day on the job, my manager said there's a walk-out today should I choose to participate.
Did you read the actual article? Regarding the CEO sanctioning it, it says: "It was classic P.R. jujitsu—absorbing the language of dissent to neutralize it."
The main bitterness is pretty clearly directed at Google's handling of internal sexism and sexual misconduct, culminating at what seems to be pretty direct (but underhanded) retaliation at the organizers of the walkout during a time when they gathered sustained internal and external publicity, leading to her immediate departure. Are you claiming the real spark of that conflict was her "being bitter at the people around her due to being unable to maintain relevancy" and not any real convictions she held regarding the known misconduct at the company? Seems like a dubious accusation to me in that case.
I didn't get that vibe from this piece at all. Claire sounds disillusioned more than she sounds bitter, and I really don't see too much supporting the narrative about her becoming upset because of her lack of relevancy.
This story naturally ends after Claire's departure, but "that the era of sanctioned dissent was over" did not mean that dissent was over. The lesson for many was that "asking nicely" wasn't working. I believe that realization that real power was needed to in order to make change was a big part of why the Alphabet Workers Union was able to get off the ground. Of course it hasn't gotten the numbers to actually build much power, sadly.
It wasn't over at that time. The real shift was after those people broke into Thomas Kurian's office. Right after, they permanently cracked down hard on various forms of employee expression, including posting flyers.
Hasn't yet. No need to be defeatist about organizing. All of the other things tech workers have to be defeatist about (pointless hype cycles, layoffs, etc.) show no signs of stopping and will effectuate more organizing over time.
I was there 06-25, and this matches my recollection. Honestly, it's a very restrained document.
Agreed. From firsthand experience, it's accurate, captures the feeling of being there at that time, and is more restrained than I would have been.
FYI: this is an excerpt from https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Be-Evil-Bosses-Promises/dp/00634...
Fun easter egg: the barcode on the cover (the one on the left at least) is for the book's ISBN.
Can you imagine how annoying it would be for checkout workers to have a giant barcode with a different product on the front of a book!
I actually enjoyed the first hand experience of an early-ish Google described at the beginning. For those with enough tenure in tech, was this ethos unique (at the time)? Or was it typical of successful, tech-heavy startups? I could believe an early Sun might've felt similar but I don't know.
Most of the top names had unique, great cultures at some point. Early Microsoft was awesome, as well, I hear, early Apple.
Ah good point. The Intel Museum in Santa Clara shows signs of that too. Custom labels on bottles of wine to celebrate hittings revenue milestones e.g.
Early Microsoft (well, and current micorsoft) did not/does not shower their employees with massive stock grants.
Google was one of the first tech companies to pay so well that people switched industries to get into tech both to work alongside brilliant people from various backgrounds and to make a lot of money.
Before Google, it was very rare for an independent contributor/software engineer in tech to retire early if you didn't hit the startup lottery. Sure, people who joined Microsoft pre-IPO did well, but it's not the same as now where a good 10-15 year run at a FAANG allows many to retire early (if they choose).
I'm glad James Damore's arguments were correctly strawmanned
I don't know where else to express gratitude for the delightful read that this was.
I wish to hope that more and more people are seeing the hollowness of all that these corporations posture and profess.
> in 2023, Google laid off some twelve thousand people, representing around six per cent of its workforce, and, in the years that followed, an estimated four hundred thousand jobs were eliminated across tech
This right here, ooh you're so close! Those 400k people were fired because white collar workers, as a bloc, became powerful, and started making demands of management, demands like "you should do something about social inequality." During the height of the pandemic, most of that energy was focused on race. And those demands were met! C-suite executives and board members were forced by their white collar employees to implement DEI initiatives at work, put pronouns in their email signatures, have complex conversations about social power and race and gender at company all-hands. These same people are now sitting behind Donald Trump at his inauguration.
Did they do those DEI things in 2021 because they wanted to, or because they had to? And if they had to, what power compelled them? Remember: these people gave 90 million dollars to someone who coerced one of his own employees to do oral sex on him in a hotel room!
The way I read this is that a company will sacrifice everything (in this case, incredible corporate culture) to maintain the balance of power between management and employee. As soon as I started reading about internal organizing, I knew exactly where this story was going to end.
Your job description re-written at the drop of a hat, sudden re-org and alienation from coworkers, feeling like an interloper at your own job, sudden gaslighting - that is what real power looks like. The only reason she was not immediately fired is because of actual labor laws, which H.R. knows inside and out. Were those laws not on the books every single one of those googler moms in that group chat would be fired within 24 hours. They probably were all pushed out in a manner exactly like Claire within the span of a few months. With a paper trail to CYA in case of a suit.
> Did they do those DEI things in 2021 because they wanted to, or because they had to? And if they had to, what power compelled them?
These are rhetorical questions. I also don't think your description of an "incredible corporate culture" is widely shared, given how you described it in your comment.
I was there in 2023 and was glad they whacked all the DEI stuff. The work did also feel less bloated then and overall better. But then they ruined it by lowering the hiring bar.
Google, Apple, Amazon, MS etc don't seem to be the default place for top EECS grads anymore. Maybe middling candidates and H1b prisoners but 4.0 GPA grads with personal projects end up at NVIDIA, OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. And Meta, because they still pay insane.
I think a lot are also opting for startups. I think the number of million dollar value start ups is up quite a bit right now.
That h1b prisoner comment is starrrrrk (and true to my experience as well).
Amazon and MS were never really in the same league as Google and Apple.
I don't really believe NVIDIA pays near as well as the latter two companies either (per level, not accounting stock appreciation), though obviously if you joined in 2022 you're doing fantastic. But if you joined two years ago? You'd make less than you would have made at Apple or Google.
OpenAI and Anthropic are obviously standout companies that are top tier bar none, but they also hire a lot less, and even more sparringly from new grads.
So I don't really believe the premise that 'middling grads' just go get jobs at Apple like it's a consolation prize, making 220k a year starting or whatever it is.
James Damore won, we're living in his world. Or the Gamergate world. It makes me wonder why though, it's not as if half the country and many of the engineers don't still have the same progressive values. Honestly I think it's just the power of the rich men with all the money. SWE's labor power has been slipping away ever since Elon's "let that sink in" and this will only continue to accelerate.
> One recounted a tragicomic anecdote from a T.G.I.F. meeting on International Women’s Day, when a Googler had asked Larry and Sergey to name some of their personal female heroes.
..and they couldn’t just say “Grace Hopper”? These people have used computers before, right?
Grace Hopper is the goat but I'm not sure she would have immediately come to mind for me. Actually, if someone asked me to name any hero of mine, irrespective of sex, I don't know if I could quickly name someone. Is it really a huge indictment?
Go find the drunkest pledge in a Stanford frat house, give him media training a stylist and a personal trainer, and ten years to craft a corporate ideolect through twitter threads and founders' retreats. That's how you get the archetypal tech CEO.
As a class they are overwhelmingly incurious people, and would barely notice if you swapped their industry out for Big Tobacco or bombs. They care exactly as much about tech as Jeffrey Epstein did about finance.
I'm struck at how brutal it is to be a woman in even pseudo-progressive tech spaces at times. How talking the talk does nothing if HR and leadership quickly and quietly work to undermine at all and make life hell. The HR line of "we investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing" always feels surreal.
I think the company’s goals are what’s most important to the company. Being a woman is incidental to that, imho. There are lots of things an employee might be unhappy about. In most cases the company isn’t going to change its priorities for any of them.
HR, it turns out, is not there for the employee's benefit. (I found out the hard way.)
> “We need moon shots,” Larry would say, big, world-changing ideas and initiatives, to make employees excited about innovating again. (Curing cancer wasn’t necessarily a moon shot, he once suggested, since it would only extend the average human life span by about three years.)
And yet I'd much prefer to have one kid with cancer be saved and allowed to live an average lifespan than to have thousands of old rich people extend their extractive existences for decades.
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The Voice of Google - should be silenced. I don't want to hear any more Google propaganda in general. From "acceptable ads" to trying to kill ublock origin - enough is enough.
Lol, read the article buddy
Half the article was about Google's PR agent, where "voice of Google" means PR, so the comment is on point
TGIF at my non-Google startup, founded by xooglers, reeked of the same brototypical sweaty odor alluded to in this story.