
To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo - caution
https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/08/07/google-documents-show-taboo-words-antitrust
======
Afforess
Google (okay, Alphabet) is the only big tech company that I can imagine would
ultimately _benefit_ from an antitrust breakup.

Google keeps killing low-to-medium profitable smaller product lines and tools
because it can't spin them off successfully. Google can't spin off tools
successfully because their internal codebases are deeply reliant on
assumptions about Google's infrastructure and Google internal libraries, etc.
(for example: Google Reader could not be spun off because it assumed things
about Google's infrastructure + libraries.) So Google arrives at this strange
position where medium-yet-small profitable products can't be spun off or
divested because of Google's secret sauce (their internal infrastructure). So
Google kills successful products instead, because it isn't interested in
scaling up an only _modestly_ successful product.

This is insane and a sign that something is deeply wrong in Google. Splitting
Google up, forcing this infrastructure to become open, etc would be much
healthier than perpetually killing small products to protect Google's secret
sauce.

~~~
shadowgovt
It's not even so much about protecting the secret sauce as protecting user
data. Every tool interfacing to the Google backend is a potential attack
vector. When the time comes that nobody's willing to bear the cost to keep it
updated as the core infrastructure changes, the product dies.

In a world where Google is split up, that'll still be true; it'll look more
like "Google CoreCloud has just changed API foo to protect against backflooper
attacks; all users must change by Q4 2022." And spin-offs that can't afford
the change will kill features or products.

In fact, in a world where individual pieces of Alphabet are required to sink
or swim based on their own profitability, I expect _more_ products dead, not
fewer. Ads pays for search. Who pays for search in a world where the
government has stepped in and divested ads and search from each other?

~~~
jacquesm
That's why we originally had an IETF and RFC's were publicly commented on and
why standards are supposed to be company agnostic.

The whole proprietary-APIs-over-HTTP was a giant step back. Before we did that
interop between internet based applications was far more common and supported.
Now every company treats 'their users' as their own private little walled
garden when before 'your users' were not so much cows to milk as they were
users you exposed services to at the protocol level.

We have been able to move very fast and very far because of this shortcut but
the price is a very high one and I'm not so sure if in the longer term we will
end up with an advantage.

~~~
shadowgovt
I'm not convinced, though there are, obviously, advantages to RFCs and IETF.

The primary disadvantage is speed. A private corporation innovating on its
full stack can come up with a faster and more secure HTTP alternative for
their use case in the time it takes the RFC process to get up in the morning
and find its shoes. Google has a streamed cloud gaming service running in its
web browser right now; how long would it take the RFC process to kick out the
protocols necessary to enable that?

~~~
johannes1234321
There is another downside to IETF/RFC/public standard: it's hard to move
forward.

My favorite example: e-mail. SMTP and IMAP are old and have so many issues. On
the SMTP side it is hard to identify authorized senders, which is a reason for
spam, IMAP doesn't really work nice with mobile devices. On the other hand
there are messengers like WhatsApp which solves many of those issues and
allows adding features (for good or bad) and contrary to mail is fully
encrypted and signed (assuming Facebook didn't break it, yet, after adding
Signal's technology)

~~~
jacquesm
RFCs don't get changed, they get replaced by new ones. Until we find something
that is 'good enough'. SMTP and IMAP are now older than quite a few of HN's
readers. They _could_ be replaced by something better, all someone would have
to do is design it and put out a new RFC.

What is true though is that once a protocol is 'good enough and it gains mass
adoption that change is hard but this is more to be blamed on human nature and
inertia than that it is to be blamed on the RFC system in itself.

~~~
josephg
And this is happening. The JMAP working group at the IETF is writing new RFCs
to replace SMTP/IMAP, Caldav, and others with a much cleaner protocol built on
top of JSON and HTTP.

Its already in use at Fastmail and a few other places. (The fastmail web
client talks JMAP to get your emails from the fastmail servers.)

Specs and more here: [https://jmap.io/](https://jmap.io/)

Still no sign of adoption by gmail / etc but hopefully we'll see the industry
move forward eventually.

~~~
mulmen
This was the final straw. I have been considering it for literally years but I
believe in open standards including email itself. If fastmail is supporting
and advancing that I have no problem paying for their service.

I just created a fastmail account and set it up on my devices. Now begins the
long process of moving away from gmail.

------
flak48
I don't work at Google but I had to take similar training too, where using
words/phrases like 'dominant', 'market share', 'leading in a market' etc were
discouraged. Specifically because the 'market' can be interpreted in a zillion
different ways, especially for tech companies.

Don't think this kind of thing is new, rare or shocking.

Peter Thiel in Zero to One also gives examples of how a company can be
considered a monopoly and not a monopoly by simply increasing the definition
and size of the market that the company is operating in. (And how companies
will generally try to avoid being classified as monopolies this way)

e.g. Google is a monopoly if you consider online advertising as the market,
but if you stretch the market to all advertising (including print, radio, TV
and billboards), Google might not be considered one.

Similarly Amazon in the e-commerce market vs general retail.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
Yep. This is hardly new. I have been at Google since the mid 2000s and this
stuff has been around at least since then. There was also a similar training
when I was at Microsoft.

Btw, in the trainings I've taken, it's not just about avoiding specific words,
but avoiding the thoughts behind those words. Our goal shouldn't be to
"dominate the competition/market." The goal should be creating compelling
experiences and products for our customers. Staying focused on the latter goal
is long term better business and better global citizenship.

I think saying that Google does this to "head off regulators" is not really
fair. That's like saying "asdfasgasdgasdg pays their taxes to head off the
IRS." I guess? In some sense we all follow the law partly in order to avoid
the consequences of not doing so but it seems pejorative to say it this way.
It makes it sound like there are a lot of other people who are paying their
taxes out of the goodness of their hearts, but I'm the bad person who is only
doing so to avoid legal consequences.

~~~
WalterBright
> it's not just about avoiding specific words, but avoiding the thoughts
> behind those words.

People are always trying to control the thoughts of others by banning certain
words. Is there any evidence it works? I've seen plenty of evidence it does
not, as the new word simply takes on the meaning of the old one. Then that new
word gets banned as well.

~~~
monadic2
> People are always trying to control the thoughts of others by banning
> certain words.

I can really only think of one truly banned word....

~~~
monadic2
To give context, WalterBright is a libertarian with a clear bent to ignore
white supremacy in western culture. He is also known for other reasons.

------
andrewstuart2
This isn't really uncommon. Part of my training at my current job for a large
company which is decidedly not a monopoly includes these kind of suggestions,
definitely directed towards avoiding anti-competitive legal issues. Honestly I
think you could almost argue that it's helpful to change the language, because
it keeps focus off of "crushing the competition" and on "serving the users
best" (IIRC that's an exact example from my training).

Language matters in law, yes, but language also impacts company culture.

------
compiler-guy
If you think this rule is silly because the lawyers ought to know that when an
engineer says something that uses a term used colloquially that the lawyers
will interpret legally, you aren't allowed to be pedantic when a non-
programmer uses a programming term incorrectly either.

Like, you can't complain when someone says "growing exponentially" when they
mean "growing really fast."

It's the same sort of problem, and it is unfortunate that the lawyers can do
it. But It happens in every field, really.

~~~
FrojoS
Good point. But because being arrogant is more fun ...

... first a nitpick:

Exponential growth is a mathematics term and it's misused a lot by programmers
and HN users (to mean "growing really fast.").

... then a wider sweeping comment:

Thanks to COVID-19, the understanding of what exponential growth means has
probably increased a lot in the general population. It was quite funny to see
people saying things like "Not only are the cases growing exponentially, but
the daily increase is also growing exponentially."

Well, you can show them wolframalpha.com/input/?i=derivative+of+e%5Ex or there
10th class math books with all the content they _knew_ they would never need
once they left school.

~~~
nitrogen
_or there[sic] 10th_

Another reason to be wary of making corrections to someone else's work:
Muphry's Law.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law)

FWIW when commenting on my phone, like I usually do, the autocorrect and I
make some really cringeworthy typos and substitutions too.

------
gniv
Isn’t this standard practice in big corps? These trainings are usually
contracted to third parties and they tend to have similar content with small
customizations for each company.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
It's standard practice to tell employees things like "you shouldn't discuss
these sensitive topics over email" or "we're philosophically opposed to lock-
in so don't say our users are locked in". But I've worked in a couple of big
tech corps, and I don't remember ever being handed a specific list of
euphemisms I should use. (After all, what's the point of the euphemisms if an
official document describes what they really mean?)

------
jefftk
One of the leaked documents this article is based on explains a lot more of
the background: [https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7016657-Five-
Rules-o...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7016657-Five-Rules-of-
Thumb-for-Written-Communications.html)

(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)

------
tyingq
I immediately thought of mafia code words they would use to defeat wiretaps.
Like:

 _Among the lines used were: "The sheep need shearing ... the shears need
sharpening" or "The hay is ready." The Italian police said they do not believe
the mafia members were discussing agricultural matters._

[https://www.businessinsider.com/the-head-of-the-sicilian-
maf...](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-head-of-the-sicilian-mafia-used-
sheep-code-to-communicate-2015-8)

------
ocdtrekkie
I feel like in this case, regulators should be able to re-substitute any of
the "good" terms, with the "bad" terms when citing email evidence, since
clearly, Google has now shown that phrases like "valuable to users" are
synonyms in their parlance for "network effects".

~~~
shadowgovt
Not exactly. The key idea of the training is that rank-and-file SWEs don't
realize that words have legal meanings separate from their colloquial
meanings, and they can cause undue trouble for the company and for themselves
with poor word-choice. It's more about "Don't say the product is 'dominating
the market' when you don't have any idea what your product's percent share is
in the market or, for that matter, how 'market' is defined, because if your
email comes out in a subpoena it won't come out in the context that makes it
clear you're talking out your ass."

Doug Melamed's comments in the article have the right idea:

""" “It’s not just trying to hide the truth, it’s really trying to avoid the
use of inflammatory language,” said Melamed, a former acting assistant
attorney general in charge of the antitrust division at the U.S. Department of
Justice. “The use of the word ‘market’ could be very innocent, but it could be
misleading and provocative to an antitrust enforcer. Antitrust enforcers
really get exercised when they think someone dominates a market.” """

~~~
akersten
Right. People are reading into this way too much, in reality it looks like
pretty standard "don't use legalese when you're not a lawyer" type training
that I've seen at every BigCo.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
Well, it also has the desirable side effect of heading off writing colorful
things that look bad if leaked to the public. A classic example is Microsoft's
"knife the baby" moment back in the late '90s:
[https://www.theregister.com/1998/11/06/were_talking_about_kn...](https://www.theregister.com/1998/11/06/were_talking_about_knifing/)

------
ta20200710
At Amazon, all employees are trained not to use the words: "marketplace",
"platform", and a few others.

~~~
one2know
Amazon's products are identified by a key made of marketplace and ASIN, so
that's strange. Amazons "focus on the customer" principle turned out to be
sham as they are acutely focused on their competitors, whether Quidsi,
Walmart, or Amazon sellers.

------
baryphonic
Reminds me of Peter Thiel's observation that monopolies lie.[1] Also, IANAL
but I can't imagine a memo/training that says not to use certain words because
of "regulatory issues" is not itself evidence that Google knows of its own
monopolistic status.

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-
for-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-
losers-1410535536)

~~~
shadowgovt
Surprisingly, it's not. It's evidence that Google knows some words are open to
misinterpretation, so engineers are encouraged to use more accurate words and
not stray into words with colloquial meanings differing from their legal
meanings (because subpoenas lack context).

If I say I'm "killing it" this week, I'm not committing homicide.

~~~
xondono
Well, I’ve never known any colloquial use of “network effects”, it’s quite the
technical term with well defined meaning.

~~~
mthoms
Agreed. See also "barriers to entry". But the one that irks me the most is —

> "We’ve got lots of competitors, so don’t assume we control or dominate any
> market."

So basically... _lie_?. In search (their bread and butter), they certainly
don't have "lots" of competitors and they absolutely do "dominate" the market.

It's one thing to discourage the use of certain phrases. It's quite another to
encourage blatant dishonesty.

~~~
shadowgovt
An awful lot of Googlers don't work in search.

~~~
mthoms
Right, and they seem to be encouraged to be dishonest about Google's position
in search.

Anyways, a majority of Google's non-search products are intrinsically _tied
to_ their search product so it's still relevant.

------
Nasrudith
That isn't surprising - lawyers love to pull propaganda Kafkatraps based on
twistings of words and only taking what they want to hear/say as opposed to
the whole message. And former lawyers make up those grandstanders.

------
Aunche
Anyone who has ever worked in trading in the past decade should be familiar
with these sort of rules. Anything that you say that can remotely be
interpreted as manipulating the market will get you written up or possibly
fired. It could be something as innocuous as "Tesla's valuation is insane
right now."

~~~
hbogert
as in the Billions tv-series when they actually do influence the market,
they'd say: "I am not uncertain that [blabla]"

------
fortran77
Every publicly traded company I've ever worked for made similar requests of
words we shouldn't use, including "dominant" when talking about one of our
products that had a large market share. I don't think this caution is unique
to Google.

------
seibelj
I have worked in blockchain / cryptocurrency for years. Remember team - it's a
"utility token", not a "security"! Words matter!

------
nxc18
I wonder where the line is. Is it ok for a startup like slack to attempt to
'kill email'? Is it ok for a startup like Slack to try to 'destroy' email?
What about destroying Outlook specifically?

I'm also wondering to what degree this would apply if Google didn't have so
many products; would it be ok for Gmail employees to destroy Outlook if Gmail
was its own company, separate from all the rest?

As a personally competitive person, I tend to be motivated by a drive to
destroy the competition and deprive them of business (through fantastic
products and great customer service), whether that competition is internal or
external to the business. The existence of upstart competitors is explicitly
licensed by the failure of established competitors to failing to serve their
customers well.

If you work at a place like Microsoft Office in 2010, do you just continue to
excuse the existence of things like Google Docs? Would it be wrong to destroy
their business prospects by getting in on the online collaborative editing
game? Would it have been wrong to do so in 2003, when internal engineers
prototyped it, before Google Docs was released?

Many companies that were dominant have seen their near-monopoly positions
eroded by new entrants; I can't help but think they were hurt by lack of a
drive to destroy the competition and keep it that way. One example seems to be
Adobe Illustrator and Sketch. It would have been better for consumers if Adobe
just came out with its newer tools like XD, rather than waiting for Sketch to
force their hand.

I'm wondering where the line is between healthy competitive drive and
anticompetitive behavior/thinking.

~~~
cortesoft
It is ok for a startup to want to 'kill' competitors. Regulators don't care if
companies WANT to establish a monopoly.

They only care if they succeed.

~~~
im3w1l
What if years later you do succeed?

~~~
nkingsy
Regulators are looking for language that abuses an existing monopoly. Intent
to create a monopoly is not evidence for the existence of one.

~~~
d1zzy
No but once regulators determine (based on other criteria) that it IS a
monopoly, then all those internal messages that seemed to agree with that will
be used as proof that the company "knew" about it so the fines will be much
larger.

------
cromwellian
The real gist is you should assume all internal communication will one day be
cited (even out of context) in front of a Congressional committee, so even
what you think is harmless speculation, a joke, a casual opinion, or even
sarcasm, could have you testifying under oath.

------
buss
This same guidance is at every very large company. What a nothingburger

------
monkeydust
This is common, any big size tech company with a good antitrust lawyer would
do something like this. Nothing shocking about this at all.

~~~
monkeydust
In fact suprised they have only just done this!

------
Reedx
Isn't this just a form of theater? Word swapping doesn't change anything about
the actual reality.

~~~
Minor49er
Exactly. The title even notes that this is simply a move to head off
regulators

------
DenisM
> "Bad: the defensive rationale for this acquisition is clear: Get ahead of
> the competition and cut off their access to the target's product"

> "Good: The rationale for this acquisition is clear: Integrate the target
> with Google and improve our products for users"

The conversion is very lossy so will likely hamstring Google's business
processes, both immediately and by eventual morphing of the vague-wording
culture into the bullshit culture.

Which it seems would serve the purpose of promoting competition - selectively
handicapping companies big enough to worry about antitrust makes room for
smaller and nimbler companies.

------
Nginx487
I know this is not much, but when I joined de-Googlefication initiative, I
felt it's a right thing to do. Firefox with uBlock Origin, DuckDuckGo, Lineage
OS on the smartphone. When I have to use Google products, say Maps or
YouTube,I do it from separate "compartment". It's not that much. But when I
stopped feeling like I'm a victim of strangely sophisticated, odd and
dystopian evil, openly claiming "we are the internet", killing companies and
products, I felt like I'm a part of a small, statistically insignificant, but
determined and well-informed resistance.

~~~
judge2020
I don't see how this is relevant to the article. Does every submission
referring to Google need a thread about how to stop using their products?

------
grawprog
>We use the term ‘User Preference for Google Search’ and never the term market
share, >Instead of “market,” employees may say “industry,” “space,” “area,” or
simply cite the region, according to the presentation.

Sometimes I feel like people take language far too literally and forget that
the point of.language is communication and intent, changing the language
really doesn't change the meaning behind anything, but because we live in a
world where every word is being taken increasingly literally without any
search for intent or meaning, we end up with utter nonsense like this.

------
xenonite
"Dominance rule" is a common term in the science of combinatorial
optimization. It felt a awkward when I first heard it, but the word fits
pretty well to its meaning. I don't think it is a good idea to change such
common terms because of such trends or even "Excel" (due to Excel's
autocorrect, certain gene names are taboo and get renamed
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24070385](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24070385))

------
jawns
There is always going to be some gray line that, if crossed, gets you into
antitrust territory, and Alphabet is incentivized to get as close to that line
as possible without going over it. And it's large enough to invest
considerable resources into figuring out just how close to the line it can
get.

That's why language like this matters so much to Alphabet. When you're
operating close to the line, even if you haven't gone over it, you don't want
to give anybody any reason to suggest you're an inch further than you actually
are.

------
WarOnPrivacy
Employees "are further cautioned never to print or hand out their slides".

This inspires a brand new thought; I should find ways to surreptitiously
record Google sales meetings.

~~~
canada_dry
> surreptitiously record meetings

With the advent of work-from-home via Zoom, I suspect we're going to see much
more content of this type being released by disgruntled employees.

------
dooglius
There was a similar rule when I was at Microsoft: I'm paraphrasing, but we
couldn't talk about beating the competition, we had to just frame things in a
specific way.

------
brownbat
Reminded me of Hal Varian talking about Google's dominance and (dismissing any
role of) network effects back in 2008:

[https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/our-secret-
sauce.htm...](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/our-secret-sauce.html)

They were pretty on message even a decade ago.

------
cabalamat
> “We use the term ‘User Preference for Google Search’ and never the term
> market share,” that document says.

Then wouldn't a court, whenever it sees "User Preference for Google Search" or
any other similar euphemism, simply treat it as meaning "market share"?

------
hawktheslayer
I'm now imagining Sundar walking around the Google offices with the buzzer
from the Taboo game.

------
anigbrowl
Stick a fork in it, it's done. Once a corporation starts lying to itself and
employees are expected to participate, it's doomed. I agree that a breakup
would be the best thing for the individual units at this point.

------
WalterBright
Franklin Roosevelt did not allow anyone to make recordings or take minutes in
White House meetings. Historians find this very frustrating, but all you need
for a rationale for that is what happened to Nixon.

------
nige123
"Don't be Evil" -> "Don't appear Evil"?

------
jacquesm
I'll help out here with a much simpler definition:

A monopoly is a company that you can not avoid doing business with. Microsoft,
Google -> monopolies. Apple -> not yet.

That way we can save us all some time debating how many angels can dance on a
pin. Note that both Google and Microsoft have worked very hard to make it that
way, it is only fair that they should accept the flip side of that coin. If
you break email to the point where your only options are to either see a good
portion of your mail undelivered or join the borg then you've just turned
yourself into a monopoly.

The better way to avoid being labelled a monopoly is to try very hard to play
nice with other eco-system players.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I think Apple is probably the least-worst-offender amongst the FAANG group
right now, but I'd definitely argue Apple is a monopoly by this definition.
Nearly every business industry has to have an app these days. Imagine a bank
not having mobile banking available from iOS in the United States. They'd
literally lose customers over it.

So for many industries, you must have an iOS app, and to have an iOS app, you
must go through the App Store, and you must give 30% of your app revenue to
Apple.

~~~
jacquesm
See that other thread on the homepage right now. Hes, they are the least-worst
but that does not make them close to good.

------
moron4hire
"Certainly don't change your behavior! By all means, continue to lie, cheat,
and steal. Just make sure you come up with code words for it."

------
linsomniac
When I started working in Real Estate, it blew me away that our company
reviewed listing comments looking for, among other things, "man cave", because
it could demonstrate a bias towards selling it to a man. Bias is a very real
problem, I just hadn't thought about "has a man cave" in that light before.

------
throwawaysea
All the big tech companies do this, and yes, it is not OK. These organizations
are too big, wield too much power, and are like governments unto themselves.
For some reason, they have not had the same public perception and have avoided
labels like "conglomerate" that have stuck to other companies like Samsung.

~~~
Nasrudith
Because conglomerate is a technical term. They aren't making Google washing
machines or google munitions. GE is an actual conglomerate.

~~~
throwawaysea
The definition is simple though. "A conglomerate is a multi-industry company".
Google is in search, advertisement, video, music, hardware, productivity
software, cloud, cars, etc. These are a substantial piece of the modern
economy and if we aren't calling that "multi-industry", I am not sure th term
has meaning.

------
munificent
Somewhat tangential, but here's something I see to be a fundamental challenge
with capitalism:

Two properties that significantly increase the value that an individual
business can provide to users are economies of scale and network effects. The
former lets them provide more user value for less cost. The latter gives users
N^2 increasing value at only N cost.

But those two properties are also fundamentally anti-competitive. The fewer
independent competing businesses there are, the greater these properties are
maximized.

This doesn't mean capitalism should be completely discarded, but it means
there is an unhealthy positive feedback loop where the system will trend
towards consolidation and monopolies unless some other equally powerful force
balances it out.

At the same time, going too far in the opposite direction and having many
competing small companies may also be worse for consumers. You get more
optimal pricing of more inefficiently produced goods because of the lower
economies of scale and network effects.

~~~
bravo22
Capitalism is built around competition and anti-monopoly, philosophically.

Unfortunately in reality people believe that the only good monopoly is the one
they (think) they control. This leads them to pile more and more power into
that institution -- Government. This makes the government a prize to win, ripe
for abuse and takeover by special interest. In turn the government doesn't do
the one thing it is supposed to do, which is ensure competition and prevent
monopolies.

The basic premise of anti-trust is that you can't use your power in one area
(say search) to gain marketshare in another area (say shopping, or videos).
Google should have been broken up a long time ago. This doesn't go against any
foundation of capitalism.

~~~
benlivengood
> Capitalism is built around competition and anti-monopoly, philosophically.

What the modern world has is corporatism, not capitalism, and so profit is the
primary motivator. Competition gets in the way of profit by making production
and pricing more efficient, so profit-seeking stifles competition and leads to
monopoly.

Quite unfortunately there is no way to align the incentives of competition and
self-interest; profit and self-interest are naturally strongly aligned.

~~~
dragonwriter
> What the modern world has is corporatism

No, mostly not (China has corporatism, Mexico under the PRI one-party regime
had corporatism, fascist regimes had corporatism; the modern developed world
has capitalism with corporations playing a central role, but thats how
capitalism has always been and was a feature of the concrete system for which
the term capitalism was coined.)

~~~
benlivengood
Thanks for the correction. I think the proper term I was looking for was
"corporate capitalism"

------
derryrover
So being a monopolist comes with quite the potential costs. Employees now have
to memorize meaningless, if not just plain wrong, synonyms. Not to talk about
the miscommunication this might cause.

Did any of you working for big-corp ever experience problems caused by this
language use?

~~~
d1zzy
This is standard "avoid risky legal language" training at any big company.
Whether they might have a monopoly or not.

------
smadge
"Assume every document will become public"

------
danaliv
Wow. Read this the other way around, and they all but admit that the purpose
of integrating acquisitions into Google is to cut off access to competitors.

------
nikolaipaul
The day a company makes words taboo, is a good day to leave.

------
MrZongle2
This is doubleplusgood.

------
nabla9
Google knows exactly what the problem is even if it fights it.

------
ponker
Oh jeez you’re not supposed to write this shit down. Learn from the Wall
Street guys and send emails that say “call me”

------
salawat
I find that if you can't speak frankly and avoid trouble, then you need to
give a long hard thought to what you're doing. A terd is still a terd by any
other name.

~~~
dredmorbius
"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, FormerGoogle CEO, 2009

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-
schmid...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-
dismisses-privacy)

------
bitL
Is this from The Onion? How are they going to communicate efficiently? Are
they going to pass each mail through a safespeak-to-efficientspeak translator?
Some automatic transformer mail plugin digging out the real meaning of
sentences?

------
rpastuszak
> “Alphabet gets sued a lot, and we have our fair share of regulatory
> investigations,” reads another. “Assume every document will become public.”

:)

~~~
rpastuszak
The smiley face was supposed to mean "gotta appreciate the irony of that
statement". I should've been more clear I suppose.

------
blocked_again
> We use the term ‘User Preference for Google Search’ and never the term
> market share,” that document says

Now that this document is out, can't the government just map their fancy words
back to the original word using this doc as a map?

~~~
pwinnski
Not easily, because how do you separate the now-two uses of "people prefer
Google search?" Sometimes they mean "market share" and sometimes they mean
"people prefer Google search," and there's now no way to tease them apart
reliably.

~~~
shadeslayer_
If it were so, how is it possible for the Google employees to tell them apart?

~~~
pwinnski
Right, exactly. They don't want employees talking about market share or
dominance at all!

------
mc32
To throw off the feds, the mob starts using code words... like the feds don’t
know.

People will talk about the subject but use different words is all.

Isn’t this as transparent as mafiosi saying things like “when you get the big
fish in the lights send the fish to the butcher?“ Who would they be fooling?

~~~
DenisM
Presumably lawyers who penned these rules understand that one set of words is
a lot easier to interpret favorably in court than the other.

It doesn't matter what the "feds" think, only the court's opinion is relevant
to the outcome.

------
kome
We reached the big tech version of Orwell's Politics and the English
Language... [https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-
foundation/orwel...](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-
foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/)

~~~
shadowgovt
When it comes to legal jargon, we've always been there. There aren't really
"magic words" in law, but there are words that carry legal meaning and the
meaning can be misinterpreted when one sees the word out of context in a
subpoena'd document.

