
Senior Google employee says quest to stop leaks is now management's top priority - adventured
https://www.businessinsider.in/f-you-leakers-a-former-senior-google-employee-says-a-frantic-quest-to-stop-internal-info-getting-out-is-now-managements-number-one-priority/articleshow/67000790.cms
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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18634941](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18634941)

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skybrian
In some sense this isn't really new. Google has always emphasized the
importance of keeping confidential things secret, with the argument that it
allows them to share information more widely internally and have robust
internal discussions. (In contrast to Apple which is much more secretive
internally.) At least at first, employees mostly bought into it. It was always
understood that if you get caught leaking you'll be fired and maybe worse, and
generally people assumed you deserved it.

But this gradually eroded over the years, as more leaks happened and distrust
increased, and now it seems to have mostly broken down.

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xibalba
This article relies on a single former (disgruntled) employee as its source.
We should definitely not be making inferences about the top priorities of
Google's management based on his claims.

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bitL
Funny how the word "disgruntled" always appears in attempts to negate
unpleasant statements. Must be in some common algorithm...

Ad hominem is not really a good strategy for this these days. While we need to
be cautious about veracity of any statement, using "disgruntled" is
disqualifying anyone who uses it.

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xibalba
I think the "disgruntled" characterization in this case is quite accurate. I'm
not sure how the ad hominem fallacy would apply since Jack Poulson is actually
the source and subject of the article and thus the object of discussion.

But the real point of my original comment was that this article is subpar
journalism. The implication of the article, at least to my reading, is that
there is a trend of declining morale at Google and dissatisfaction amongst the
rank-and-file with the company's senior leadership. As evidence we are
given... one guy's opinions.

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dredmorbius
I've been following (and helping organise) the Google+ exodus over the past
two months (to the day).

Particularly disheartening has been complete radio silence from Google based
on plans, timeline, support, and bugfixes (e.g., on data takeout).

I'm among those who've speculated on an internal gag order. BI's story could
be better sourced, but it strongly reinforces impressions of a crackdown on
any information disclosure. Google have never been particularly forthcoming,
but they're being pointedly antagonistic (or frightened, or both), now.

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Despegar
Google management should try treating the cause rather than the symptom.

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cbsmith
I think you've made the same mistake the article has: presuming that they
aren't treating the cause.

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abc-xyz
If they had any intention of treating the cause then they would've abandoned
the Dragonfly project. It's violating all their own AI principles, and I've
never seen Google receive so much backlash by their own employees, human
rights organizations, as well as the public as a whole. It's proof that
there's no evil they won't stoop to as long as they can make a couple of extra
bucks.

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dmm
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't
be doing it in the first place." \- Eric Schmidt, Google CEO until last year.

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hartator
2011, but yeah Page, Bring and Schmidt were the mark of great leadership.

I wish they will be back to hearth the "organizing the world knowledge"
mission instead of just working on making ads to look like organic results.

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pinewurst
Hardly - Schmidt particularly was/is a total hypocrite about his personal life
and inquiries into such.

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xiphias2
Even as a hypocrite he was valuing employees more than any other CEO in his
time. Larry has no empathy and it was shown very clearly when he took over.

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ohashi
Seems silly, especially calling it their top priority? Really? You've got
nothing better to do?

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twtw
Probably not. They basically print money.

All the churn around Google's other products and services have ~zero impact on
their revenue stream. What matters is ensuring Google maintains goodwill so
that governments won't do anything to harm their money mill - so it makes
sense that controlling information would be management's priority.

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Animats
On the technical side, this is the price we pay for weakening software
patents. With strong patents, everyone knows what the proprietary technology
is, and after 20 years, it's public. Without strong patents, we've seen
companies get much more secretive. Trade secret laws are being used against
employees routinely now. That used to be very rare.

We know how Google worked originally, because that's patented and you can read
the patent. Today, nobody outside Google really knows. The anti-patent lobby
made a horrible mistake.

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JamesBarney
I haven't heard the argument that software patents are weaker than 20 years
ago before. And this run scounter to a lot of others things that I've read. Do
you have anything you can link to?

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Animats
Yes, but I don't have time to write a personal tutorial. Look up "America
Invents Act", "Post-grant proceedings", and "eBay vs. MercExchange".

