
Googlers Are Protesting Company’s Deals with Big Oil - yskchu
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-04/now-googlers-are-protesting-company-s-cloud-deals-with-big-oil
======
throwaway4284
Someone should do a story about all us Googlers who are sick of the politics.
You won’t see protests, open letters and stories in the media about it,
because most of us are afraid of the outrage and call-out culture negatively
impacting our careers. However, it’s a common topic among like-minded people
in informal conversations.

~~~
Reedx
I suspect we'll see companies starting to avoid hiring people who've made
politics their religion. I'd be surprised if Google isn't already trying to
take steps in that direction.

~~~
faizshah
I suspect when companies start doing that you’ll see more people in our
industry avoiding these unethical companies. It’s a fact that young people are
demanding more ethical workplaces, even finance is adapting to the new labour
market.

~~~
georgeburdell
Argument from authority. Given student loans and rent increases in the past
decade, I imagine “young people” care most about paying their bills. The ones
protesting are the privileged few

~~~
faizshah
Citing a logical fallacy doesn’t make a statement false. There’s numerous
sources supporting this(note that these are 3 different surveys from 3
different sources from 3 different years all showing the same result):

”Nearly nine out of ten, or 86 percent, of millennials (those between the ages
of 22 and 37) would consider taking a pay cut to work at a company whose
mission and values align with their own, according to LinkedIn’s latest
Workplace Culture report. By comparison, only 9 percent of baby boomers (those
between the ages of 54 and 72) would.“

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/27/nearly-9-out-
of-10-millennia...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/27/nearly-9-out-
of-10-millennials-would-consider-a-pay-cut-to-get-this.html)

“At least those are the results of a new survey out from insurer MetLife,
which found that nine out of 10 people would choose a company with similar
values over a job that pays more. And they are willing to take a pretty big
pay cut to make sure those values align with their own.

The average pay cut employees were willing to take was 21%. The findings were
not limited to high-wage earners: _People who made less than $50,000 a year
also said they still were willing to part with at least some of their salaries
for the right company._ ”

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/11/29/money-no-
lon...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/11/29/money-no-longer-
biggest-incentive-selecting-job/901899001/)

”Almost half the workforce (42%) now want to work for an organisation that has
a positive impact on the world, according to research carried out by
consultancy Global Tolerance. The survey of more than 2,000 people in the UK
found 44% thought meaningful work that helped others was more important than a
high salary and 36% would work harder if their company benefitted society.

The change, it would appear, is being driven by the so-called millennials. Of
those born between 1981 and 1996, 62% want to work for a company that makes a
positive impact, half prefer purposeful work to a high salary, and 53% would
work harder if they were making a difference to others.“

[https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/2015/may/05...](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/2015/may/05/millennials-employment-employers-values-ethics-jobs)

~~~
repolfx
They _say_ they would _consider_ it? Sure, such a weak claim is bound to get
90%+ agreeing with it. Who wouldn't say they'd _consider_ it?

Now how many actually do? Not that many, for sure.

~~~
faizshah
> Who wouldn't say they'd consider it?

"By comparison, only 9 percent of baby boomers (those between the ages of 54
and 72) would."

> Now how many actually do? Not that many, for sure.

Conjecture at best.

------
arnvald
Man, the comments here are depressing. So much cynicism in one place.

Workers protests have been successful in the past (guess why you work 8h a day
and have 2-day weekends?). I don't see why you criticise the employees that
try to make their company better.

They don't need to and don't have to threaten they'll quit, they don't have to
leave for non-profits. They can protest from within the company and try to
make it better. Quitting is not the only way company can feel there's a
problem. Lower morale of the team, fewer new ideas and initiatives coming from
employees - these are visible things, and can make a change. How big a change?
How successful change? I don't know, but I support the fact that people are
trying. Even if they still get their salaries and still work at Google.

~~~
rapsey
> I don't see why you criticise the employees that try to make their company
> better.

“better” is an entirely relative term.

~~~
raxxorrax
Closer to perfection nonetheless.

~~~
dgudkov
What's the perfection then? What's the ultimate ethic company would be like?

------
malvosenior
I really wish we'd see Google employees protesting AMP or abusive search
practices...

There's so much Google is doing to _directly_ damage the technology ecosystem.
It seems silly to protest some customer's business when Google itself is
generating a ton of protest worthy things.

I don't care about Google employee's opinions on Big Oil or ICE but I
absolutely care about their opinions on removing URLs from search results and
hijacking link clicks. The latter is something they can and should fix as they
created the problem in the first place.

~~~
omnifischer
Sorry HN-user from developing world (Bangladesh).

All AMP pages are about 10 % size of standard pages - at least for the
newspapers and blogs. Until you tell all your webdevs/managers to remove all
tracking+loading 25 scripts from universe...

Please keep AMP.

From Guardian, BBC to Washpost or our national dailies - it is horribly slow.
Our dailies also show 'notifications' even on desktop!

~~~
input_sh
Firefox and Safari solve that same issue (with reader view) without the need
to destroy open web in the process.

~~~
mattnewton
They don't download less bytes, they just throw them away. It's a solution to
a different problem (that the site has become unusable, not that it loads
unbearably slow)

Disclaimer: I'm a googler, my options are my own, I am not connected to the
AMP project.

------
Traster
People are talking about the sort of general idea of politics vs profit, but
actually I don't think that's the issue. There are tonnes of companies that
are political. The problem is that Google doesn't have a coherent approach to
their political position. Frankly, I think this is a self-created problem by
talking way too much about politics and encouraging people to bring their
politics to work, but taking very little action to actually respond to their
employees. Rather than taking the hint that Google were just all-talk,
employees decided they were going to force Google to take action and now there
are literally no guard rails around what is a political issue and what isn't
and what is up for debate and what isn't.

How long is it before some Google employee starts kicking up a fuss about the
ethical issues surrounding Google's core business?

~~~
SolaceQuantum
_” How long is it before some Google employee starts kicking up a fuss about
the ethical issues surrounding Google 's core business?”_

I for one am super excited for this being the case. I want people to protest
the privacy invasions and anti-open-web initiatives.

------
cascom
It’s always easier to think someone else should do something [that won’t
really affect you personally] so that you feel good about yourself vs taking
the hard actions involved in making changes yourself.

In this case wanting their employer to do something - safe in the knowledge
that google is so big it won’t show up in their paycheck. I would be shocked
to learn (and this is conjecture on my part) that the typical google employee
leads a truly low carbon lifestyle (petrochemical, electricity, transportation
included)

~~~
ahelwer
I highly doubt that Google employees, who earn in the top 10% of incomes in
one of the highest-per-capita emissions countries in the world, have a low
carbon lifestyle by any standards.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
The AWS and Azure sales people are giddy with joy right now. If Google does
not strongly repudiate the protest, Google Cloud is saying that Defense
companies, Oil and gas companies, and Car companies (except Tesla) are
unwelcome on Google Cloud.

If you look at the largest companies by revenue

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue)

these types of companies make up a large proportion.

In addition, other companies such as Big Pharma, Health Insurance and Big
Banks which are unpopular with the left would also be worried about when they
would be the focus of a new protest.

~~~
CobrastanJorji
News alert: choosing not to do evil is not always compatible with maximizing
profit.

~~~
edanm
> News alert: choosing not to do evil is not always compatible with maximizing
> profit.

I am so sick and tired of this attitude. In what world is working with the
military / defense contractors _evil_? Do people really believe that the
military is inherently evil? Is there literally _no_ regard to history, or the
fact that not having a military is basically tantamount to allowing other
countries to do whatever they want with you?

------
ahelwer
Good! Employees should have a say in how their labor is used.

Lotta people will say "if you don't like it, quit" but I've never understood
this. Running away isn't the only course of action available. So let's be
clear: those who say this are making an "ought" statement (if you don't like
what a company is doing, you ought to quit and let them do what they want)
rather than an "is" statement (if you don't like what a company is doing, the
only thing you can do is quit). Really illuminates the belief underlying this
sentiment: corporate power is not to be questioned.

~~~
ravenstine
Your comment is one big straw man. I don't think most reasonable people
believe that corporate power should never be questioned. What people mean when
they question whether employees would quit over an issue is that, if the
employees aren't willing to quit over a cause, then that puts into question
the authenticity of the demands being made. Signing a petition, sending
letters, calling journalists, and posting on Twitter are low effort and low
risk activities(aka slacktivism) that even casual activists can carry out, and
just because someone demands something doesn't mean that they actually care
about the issue as much as the optics suggest.

While I think it's good to demand change within organizations, the demand to
eliminate all carbon emissions is unreasonable, and usually such demands are
made by people in a comfortable position with no real skin in the game.

Nobody is saying that their only option is to quit, and nobody is going to say
that.

~~~
ahelwer
Okay well, this "slacktivism" has led to real changes:

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/27/18114285/google-
employee...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/27/18114285/google-employee-
china-censorship-protest-project-dragonfly-search-engine-letter)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/technology/google-
pentago...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/technology/google-pentagon-
project-maven.html)

Given that this lever obviously works, why shouldn't employees use it?

I agree with you that the current actions being taken aren't exercising the
full power available to employees, but absent a real union it's incredibly
difficult to organize strike action (a much superior course of action to
threatening to quit).

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
These are pretty low standards for "real changes."

You should not work at the company you are engaging in activism against. That
isn't out of respect for the corporation in question, but rather for one's
self. That's why the people who were truly against Google's unethical plans
actually left the company. They didn't just sign some form online. They
practiced what they preached. "Google shouldn't be helping the CIA murder
people, and I shouldn't be working at Google."

How can one be their very best self if they are receiving relatively enormous
paychecks working at a company with which they apparently fundamentally
disagree on policies surrounding human rights?

How can one perform optimally at their place of employment when they are
forced to cognitively take in the dissonance on a daily basis caused by the
way their values clash with their employer's goals?

A "real union"? They don't need that, Google employees are making absurdly
huge incomes at ridiculous starting salaries which are in no way
representative of what multiple of productivity they offer the firm. They have
decided their priorities supported working at an amorphous blob behemoth that
cooked all their meals for them, walked their dog for them, and babysat their
kids for them.

What this less-than-1%-minority in Google's employee needs to do is stop
having their cake and eating it, too.

~~~
ahelwer
"Change is possible & most effectively driven from within the system" is a
basic tenet of all democratic societies. Do you believe this?

You might say - well, Google is not a democratic society. But the point is
that it _can be_. So people who hold these two beliefs are perfectly justified
to work at Google, and indeed that is the most effective route to their goal:
of producing their best work in service of a just society.

Your prescribed solution is to abandon hope of change and retreat to... where?
Where can one find refuge, exactly? Are we cursed to flee forever?

~~~
jonny_eh
England was not democratic until it was.

------
rapsey
Google employees sure love to chip away at the branch they are standing on.

~~~
tharne
I've never understood why they don't just go work somewhere else. A publicly
traded corporation has a legal obligation to maximize value for their
shareholders, even if that means doing business with ICE, big oil, the
military, etc. A CEO who continually turns away legitimate and legal business
on moral grounds can be removed, and in some cases sued by the board of
directors.

If you have qualms with working for a large corporation whose primarily
purpose is to maximize value and profit within the boundaries of the law, then
you need to find a non-profit or privately held firm that's more aligned with
your values and flourish there.

~~~
raxxorrax
A true disadvantage for publicly traded companies. That would mean for
concious people that they have to work for privately owned companies.

Although you could always spin it like it would be a long time disadvantage to
work with these kind of companies. I think shareholders are the ones that take
the risk of people just not wanting to work under these conditions.

Google would degrade to be a career starter for gifted developers if
shareholders will continue enforce their immediate profit expectations.

Basically that means that the legal obligation for profit maximization is a
pretty crappy law. I doubt that people would stop investing without that legal
handle.

~~~
MaupitiBlue
> legal obligation for profit maximization

Not the law. [https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-
shareholder-v...](https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-
value-myth/)

~~~
raxxorrax
Makes sense actually.

------
badrabbit
Ffs, what a clueless bunch. Why do they have to bundle all their complaints
and make it us vs. Them??

So now if you dislike ICE you have to dislike big oil also? And vice versa?
What's next? Google should not do business with Chickfila because their
employees dislike the ceo?

I mean I dislike google so the worse business risk with google. gets the
bettet I say.

I am just afraid I will be put into a position where I either support
lgbtq+climate change+blacklives matter+anti-china+anti-russia to use any tech
service in the west or I learn chinese or russian and use their services. I
mean, why are they so intolerant of anyone who does not conform to their very
specific set of ideology and world view? They're worse than the people they
fight. You can be lgbtq and work at chickfila just fine,you can be for green
energy and work for ice,you can be against ICE and big oil will do business
with you. No matter how correct they think they are,they cause more problems
than solutions.

This is why otherwise sane people are trump supporters,because to support the
alternative you have to conform to this long list of ideological views. Only
intellectual cowards who can't be bothered to patiently discuss their views
with their peers corner people into picking between two extremes -- where
deviance is met with hostility. I refuse to accept any view or movement where
I have to surrender critical thinking and be either for the movement or
against it.

Now big oil has to band together with ICE? Good job on uniting your enemies
against you! I can't accept any result from people like this. Ends don't
justify means and freedom to think and disagree is very important.

------
duxup
How many?

We hear these stories all the time and I'm not sure "googlers are protesting"
means 10 or 10,000 employees.

We've seen googler's post here indicate that various employee initiatives have
varying levels of support but as far as media reports go they report them all
the same.

~~~
mmcconnell1618
The petition was signed by about 1,100 Googlers (from the article). Google has
well over 100,000 full time employees so the number who signed represent
around 1%

------
nabla9
(for the benefit of those who take title seriously) They are not protesting,
they made a request and wrote a letter asking for release a company-wide
climate plan that commits to cutting carbon emissions entirely.

I think their suggestion that Google stops voluntarily selling their services
for oil companies is wrong way to approach the situation. Only reducing the
global demand for oil puts oil business out of business.

In some cases a boycott is just a tax for good ethics. If the boycott is
indirect subsidy for those who don't care, it does not work.

------
noetic_techy
You will eventually simply end up with a bifurcated system with Tech companies
that will do business with certain companies associated with one side of the
aisle, and other who will not. The money is already moving in that direction.
Rupert Murdock often quipped that he started Fox News to serve a niche market:
half the country (US). Wait until you have the Fox News equivalent of Google
and Facebook and Twitter, willing to serve the Pentagon and Oil Companies and
the other half of the country. Careful what you wish for.

~~~
tharne
You're 100% right, and we already have those companies. See Palantir.

------
084537
If you work for Google, the most effective thing you can do to fight evil IMHO
is to _stop_ working for Google.

Stop helping Google create ever more refined digital portfolios on every
internet user. Google does not _intend_ for their digital portfolios to fall
into the hands of the US Government, but if the US Government ever becomes
significantly undemocratic, Google cannot stop that from happening -- and
Google's management knows that or _would_ know it if they would spend 5
consecutive minutes being genuinely curious about it.

Stop helping Google turn the web into an ever more refined machine for
extracting money from web users while continuing to make the web less well-
suited for important purposes it was originally well-suited for: namely the
publication of textual and simple graphical information not motivated by
profit. (The money flows from users of the web to organizations that use
Google to advertise, then to Google.)

------
obayesshelton
So I guess when they sell their shares in Google, they will be donating that
money to climate change...

------
discard0984
Ex-Googler here.

Google's insane appetite for growth already has it past the point where its
principles are going out the window. Those go quietly, one by one, souls sold
a nickel at a time, and with lots of self-deception and lies to the contrary.
The culture is diluted with new people who do not share it, and when any group
grows at 20% YoY, its culture won't last more than a couple years. Now at
Google, senior leadership is more concerned with making that 23% YoY revenue
bump than literally _anything_ else. Along the way it just accidentally
created a huge surveillance network that outclasses most of the world's
intelligence services. Whoops.

Vote with your feet, not with your stomach. Google doesn't give a flying crap
about technology except as a means to more power and money.

------
whatitdobooboo
I think there's something weird about relying on corporations to be judges on
other companies. I'm not trying to defend big oil, but I think the focus
should be on more scrutiny on how government and other institutions deal with
it. If googlers wants to actually change things maybe they should develop ways
to monitor these agreements. There is a sense of arrogance in believing that
(in this case googlers) know the best course of action on every issue -
especially when they are unelected

------
josh_fyi
No company can thrive when putting politics over profit.

~~~
janpot
Those silly people, believing ethics are more important than pofit...

~~~
Reedx
That just doesn't compute. If they literally were about ethics > profits or
maximizing good, they wouldn't be putting their time into a massively for-
profit operation. Collecting large checks and internal perks galore. They'd be
more attracted to a non-profit.

~~~
lghh
Are there no ethical way to make a profit?

~~~
Reedx
There are. This is certainly not to say that profits are automatically
unethical or anything.

I just don't buy into the GP’s claim that they're putting ethics _over_
profit.

------
flyGuyOnTheSly
Factories used to position immigrant workers who spoke different languages
beside each other so that they would not congregate and organize.

Not quite the same when you have thousands of highly intelligent people all
speaking the same language, in the same building, connected to the world's
fastest messaging system.

We will only see more of this, and I am happy for that.

------
SllX
If Googlers want to shoot their own feet off, I’m not seeing a problem with
that. This isn’t improving their image as a tech company, and all they are
doing is creating gaps in the market for someone else to go in and fill. In
the long run, Google will probably lose a lot of business if they continue to
give in to these protests.

------
Trias11
How many of these 1,100 workers are helping big oil companies themselves by
regularly filling their own car tanks with gas?

~~~
ahelwer
Are we still doing this? [https://thenib.com/mister-
gotcha](https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha)

~~~
ng12
Doesn't really apply. Oil companies exist because we buy oil -- both directly
(fueling our cars) and indirectly (buying produce shipped from South America
or clothing shipped from India). Saying "oil companies shouldn't have good IT
solutions" doesn't really help anything.

~~~
ahelwer
It does, though. Refusing to assist with the destruction of our planet slows
down the destruction of our planet. Why would I want to work to make these
companies _more_ effective?

~~~
ng12
Because when they're ineffective oil gets spilled. We have a vested interest
in oil being produced as cleanly and effectively as possible until we can
lessen our dependence on it.

Furthermore, the OPEC countries don't care at all and will happily sell you
oil at a nice markup if Shell and Exxon can't.

~~~
ahelwer
This is the same argument in favor of building oil pipelines, because they
spill less oil per mile than trucks or trains. It ignores _second-order
effects_ that is, since it's cheaper for the oil companies to operate, they'll
produce even more oil than they otherwise would have. And we want them to
produce less oil. Preferably none.

~~~
ng12
> they'll produce even more oil than they otherwise would have.

The production of oil is not the problem. They produce oil because we, as a
society, have placed tremendous value on it. Once we no longer need oil
they'll stop producing it.

~~~
ahelwer
Oil companies expend a ton of resources ensuring societies continue to buy &
rely on their products.

------
m0zg
This is so dumb, I have no words. Google has the cleanest energy mix in the
cloud business, and the strongest carbon neutrality commitments. If anything,
their participation in these contracts will only reduce the carbon footprint
compared to the alternatives. They're also not the only cloud provider, so if
they don't go for it, Amazon or MS will be quite happy to oblige, spewing tons
more CO2 into the atmosphere.

------
maxlamb
I see these Googler's point of view, but if Google refuses to have contracts
with big oil, won't these companies just find another tech company to provide
services for them? How is that going to help fight climate change? Wouldn't it
be more effective for Google to still have deals with them but pledge that all
net profits from those deals will go towards Alphabet's renewable energy
projects?

------
xkde
I haven’t seen this kind of activism since the 20th Century Motor Corporation.

------
m23khan
All I hope for is Google to settle this amicably with the discontented
employees and at same time not upset their clients.

Because, actions in both extreme would set a bad precedent for a tech giant
like Google:

Extreme 1 - Fire the employees or serve them notice to shut up.

Extreme 2 - End contracts / don't sell further to big oil companies. In
process, lose out vast sums of money and forever shut yourself out from the
industry even if they discovered something called 'clean, sustainable oil' in
future.

------
dj_powerpoint
I'm confused about the timing of events. Ike McCreery, who is quoted in this
article, hasn't worked at Google since 2016
([http://blog.robotswithhearts.org/2016/07/11/my-decision-
to-l...](http://blog.robotswithhearts.org/2016/07/11/my-decision-to-leave-
google.html)).

------
xyst
Surprisingly these protests appear to work. Last summer, employees protested a
multi-billion dollar contract with the DoD and was subsequently not renewed
for 2019. Albeit, their efforts may have been wasted since the work will just
be transferred to another company and internal leaks indicate the project will
still leverage Google’s cloud service.

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/IhGTh](http://archive.is/IhGTh)

------
kyrieeschaton
This is what happens when you have a couple products that make approximately
one hundred percent of your revenue on auto-pilot, and everything else is just
hazy synergy plays. People find ways to entertain themselves.

------
Starkus
Google censors and manipulates their search engine and are an enemy to free
flow of information.

------
rajivjain
What’s next, big oil employees railing against sale of oil to big tech? Where
does it all end?

------
cgb223
Wait until they start protesting companies that do mass surveillance and data
collection...

------
nexuist
Two questions here.

One, it is my understanding that most plastic is made directly from oil. If we
dropped fossil fuels tomorrow and stopped extracting oil for energy production
reasons...wouldn't we _still_ need oil companies to manufacture plastic? I
understand there are growing movements to reduce plastic usage as well, but I
also think there would be construction niches that only plastic can serve
(say, car bumpers). Is the next move synthetic plastic and then we can say
goodbye to oil forever?

Second, in response to this quote:

> “If Google is going to confront its share of responsibility for the climate
> crisis, that means not helping oil and gas companies extract fossil fuels,”
> Ike McCreery, an engineer in Google’s cloud division

You know that saying, if you're going to do a job, do it right? This is my
problem with these tech deal protests. The purpose of all technology is to
make work more efficient and more correct. If we deny access to technology for
political reasons, aren't we making the problem worse by making it easier for
these companies or orgs to make mistakes? For example, imagine if ocean
mapping companies denied data requests by oil rig operators. Chances are
they're still going to drill (because shareholders demand it), but now they'll
be in the dark and the odds of an uncontrollable spill happening shoot up.
Similarly, if ICE is denied tech access, it severely harms the _good_ parts of
the org (human trafficking / child exploitation prevention, catching violent
illegal immigrants). It is possible for an organization, especially at the
scale of a government agency, to do both good and bad at the same time. Hell,
I'm sure even Googlers have similar thoughts about certain teams within Google
itself.

I'm sure that losing GitHub access won't hurt ICE that much, and losing Google
Cloud is just a bump in the road for oil companies, but the end goal of these
protests is to get as many service providers on board as possible. While it is
every company's right to choose its customers, there seems to be a common
theme among tech protests that we are _only_ doing harm. The article quotes
Google Anthos as one of the services provided in the contract. From a quick
glance Anthos appears to be some sort of glorified Kubernetes thing.

I hope it is not controversial to state that Kubernetes can be used for both
good and evil. It is a containerization platform, not a moral arbiter.

> “It’s devastating to think the infrastructure I’ve helped build over the
> last five years would be used to help incarcerate climate refugees,” they
> said.

Again, it cannot be that black or white. The same software that manages
prisons can also manage orphanages and homeless shelters. You can use an Excel
sheet for a lottery...or genocide.

The only way we can stop bad things from happening for sure is to vote.
Cancelling contracts will not deter bad actors as long as they can hire
someone else to do the same work, and even if every company in the Western
world declines a contract on moral ground (which they are privileged to do,
given they make enough money to actually get a say in what contracts to take),
there are hundreds of thousands of companies in the 3rd world that will do
anything for the same contract. I mean, there was an article about a Polish
troll farm on the front page of HN just yesterday. Do you think a simple
protest will stop them?

Here's a thought: Google is one of the richest companies in the world. They
could donate $10 million to every politician in Congress right now if they vow
to vote yes on legislation banning fossil fuels entirely. $10M would be enough
to live comfortably till the end of your days, Big Oil lobbyists and Fox News
positions be damned. For a measly $5B Google could end climate destruction
tomorrow.

Bribery is legal in the U.S. through lobbying. Why do we only let bad actors
use it? We have trillion dollar companies with heavy liberal bases and they
_still_ donate to Republicans!

I don't think these Googlers are wrong to protest these contracts, but I guess
the point I'm trying to make is that their time would be better spent trying
to buy off the Federal government and instituting wide scale regulations that
would kill every oil company immediately, rather than trying to cut out a few
contracts. Gotta start small though, I know.

~~~
pjc50
I'm not sure that people are really expecting to see the end of oil, including
for plastic; more likely it's the necessity to ramp up rhetoric. If you demand
"the end of oil", you might get a few percentage reduction in production. If
you demand "a small decrease in production", you get nothing.

Mind you, the plastics process itself produces greenhouse gases, and
occasionally the hugely wasteful event of flaring. Every now and again either
Exxon or Shell lights a huge volume of gas on fire which can be seen in a
fifty mile radius near my house to remind us that individual action on CO2
emission is meaningless. It needs to be banned entirely.
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-
fife-4...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-
fife-49906062)

------
vinniejames
If you give a mouse a cookie...

------
there_the_and
_[deleted]_

~~~
Kiro
Comments like these are the reason we never see Google employees openly post
here anymore. We used to get comments directly from the source whenever Google
released something new.

~~~
Shivetya
No, they post here but anonymous to hide from their own coworkers and possibly
management. while some posts here may be hostile to their point of view they
cannot directly affect their job like being identified by those who sjw at
work.

------
RockmanX
come on, all these "googlers protesting google" dramas are made by google
itself for promotion.

------
cletus
I'm disappointed yet sadly not surprised that the current top comment here is
a (so far successful) attempt to hijack and equate protests about Big Oil with
AMP.

AMP came about because mobile sites suck. My only beef is there weirdly
doesn't seem to be an easy opt out (for the user or content producer). While
that's less than ideal how can you possibly equate that with:

\- Environmental damage

\- Climate change

\- Developing AI to help the military better kill people with drones (a
previous Googler protest)

Like, what twisted world view would try and equate any of the above with AMP?
If so, I seriously suggest you get over yourselves. I find that attitude
entitled and, honestly, reprehensible.

The other problem you see here is Whataboutism. Like, "oh sure, Big Oil hid
research into the effects of fossil fuels on climate change but what about [my
pet issue]?"

Not everything has to be about everything. Not tackling every issue doesn't
invalidate the protest against a particular issue. Whataboutism is what
allowed the likes of Trump to get elected.

Seriously.

Disclaimer: Xoogler.

~~~
finnthehuman
Google's actions might be orders of magnitude less evil than Big Oil's (and I
don't see why they chose AMP as their example over a more salient point). But
Google also has orders of magnitude more influence over Google's decisions
than they do big oil's. It looks like they're repenting for their lack of self
control at home by pushing their moral standards onto others at no direct cost
to themselves.

I'm just saying it feels incongruous to hear Googlers act moral about "big
oil" while making their money maintaining humanity's largest surveillance
system, ya know...?

------
alexeiz
Google is destroying itself from within. This is great news for competition.

------
ThomPete
The very companies and resource that made their job possible.

------
buboard
... and this is on top of their general shameless political activism. I wonder
at what stage this kind of "using my company's big guns to bully what i don't
like" is considered social terrorism? Google 's employees, smart as they may
be, are not the representatives of the people. Yet they act as if their
political power is legitimate

