
Google Employees Should Be “Pissed Off” Their Leadership Is Misleading Congress - seapunk
https://twitter.com/randfish/status/1159174025949564928
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Spivak
I think Google made the right choice for themselves avoiding directly
answering the question because you'll get absolutely nowhere with a "yes, but
this is meaningfully inaccurate characterization of how the search space
works." Nobody will hear anything except the yes on the various blogspam sites
and Google's eventual long-form defense/rebuttal/explanation of the report
will get lost on page 2 of their own searches for the story.

This is what you're supposed to do in law and PR. You never accept the premise
of the question, which in this case is that the percentage of searches without
a click or clicks to Google owned properties is a meaningful metric. If you
answer at all you lose.

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seapunk
Compiled here:
[https://threader.app/thread/1159174025949564928](https://threader.app/thread/1159174025949564928)

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didibus
What is a zero click search? How can 48% of search be answered without a
click? Are we talking about searches that use the currency converter widget,
calculator widget, the movie list widget, etc. Do these compromise 48% of all
search?

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snewk
sometimes theres enough info on the results page to answer your search query.

google does a lot more than simply find you a website

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tareqak
What protections would an Google employee have for calling out Google here?
Does an employee get whistleblower protection for reporting that their
employer lied to Congress or any other branch / department of some branch of
government?

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dustinmoris
Problem is that Google didn't lie, they did what politicians do, they
deflected the question. They gave an answer, but that answer was entirely
random and had nothing to do with the question. We call this waffle.

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tareqak
How does the government get a corporation to give a truthful answer to a
question?

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dustinmoris
In court, under oath is my guess? How does the electorate of a country get
their own government to give a truthful answer? Unfortunately there isn't many
ways to really get a straight answer from anyone these days. You can sue
someone for something at which point there is something at stake, until then
nobody has a reason to be honest if it could hurt their
career/business/{insert whatever thing here}. :/

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wolco
No employee should be pissed off. It's a job not a religious calling.

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_avo
I respectfully disagree: it's important that an employee assesses whether her
or his employer's actions align with their own moral compass and belief
system.

Without this check we'd surely leave ourselves open to a society where people
'just doing their job' can do some pretty heinous things. This doesn't imply
you treat it like a religious calling. Just that you give it due consideration

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wolco
I disagree. I've worked/create gambling sites, pro-gay, religious sites and
those all conflict with each other. I'm not really for or against their
mission and nor should I be.

