
Alphabet donates its employees' holiday gifts to charity - wollstonecraft
http://fortune.com/2016/12/09/alphabet-donated-its-employees-holiday-gifts-to-charity/
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dbg31415
Giving away money earmarked for employee appreciation to charity doesn't get
Google points with the press, or their staff. This isn't a good move by
Google.

Employees don't depend on Christmas gifts, but they are certainly nice. It's a
great time for the company to say, with a simple little gesture, "Thanks, we
really appreciate you."

The company can also give money to charity... not like Google has a shortage
of money.

But yeah, this... it comes off as telling the Google Employees, "You're a
bunch of ungrateful, over-privileged, spoiled brats... so I gave your gifts to
people who would appreciate them more."

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ocdtrekkie
It's kinda funny how they spun it to employees, because what happened here, is
Google bought _itself_ a tax write-off. The article misses that when it
suggests that it's "not exactly a cost-saving move".

And I mean, heck, I don't work at a Fortune 500, but my company gave me a
Christmas gift worth more than a Google Home.

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euyyn
I don't know much about corporate taxes, but isn't a charity donation the same
tax write-off as a Christmas gift to employees, if they cost the same?

And is either of those different than the write-off for business-related
costs? In other words, do corporate taxes look at more than "total revenue -
total costs"?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I also don't know too much about corporate taxes, but I'm pretty sure there's
some benefits to giving to actual charities that goes beyond a regular
business expense. "Total revenue - total costs" is the sort of tax a business
can pay if their revenue is small and simple. Once you get into itemized
taxes, there's all sorts of tax credits and such.

As an additional note, all the schools Google have these Google-tied products
to will be bound to Google's service products, so, it benefits them in that
way as well.

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euyyn
> all the schools Google have these Google-tied products to will be bound to
> Google's service products, so, it benefits them in that way as well.

I mean, yeah obviously. But I wouldn't really expect Google to give MacBooks
or Windows notebooks to those schools, and it probably would be a worse option
even if they did.

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ocdtrekkie
As someone living with a student plagued by a school-issued Chromebook, I beg
to differ. Especially for a student that could run AutoCAD and similar useful
software even on a very cheap Windows PC.

The point is, it's really not a "gift". They gave themselves a tax break, by
"donating" some hardware that ensures them future business via services. It
takes some hardcore groupthink to be convinced that it's otherwise.

~~~
euyyn
> It's really not a "gift".

> It takes some hardcore groupthink to be convinced that it's otherwise.

lol so you'd rather your school not be able to afford issuing your kid any
laptop whatsoever? Do the teachers at your school want the kids to use
AutoCAD, but someone forced them to buy Chromebooks?

More than half the schools are voting for this with their money already
[http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/03/googles-chromebooks-make-
up-h...](http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/03/googles-chromebooks-make-up-half-of-
us-classroom-devices.html) If your Google conspiracy is true, why is the
company so cunning, but at the same time dumb enough not to extend the gift to
all schools?

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ocdtrekkie
It's actually funny you mentioned the CNBC article as a source: It's junk.
They made one correction a year ago when I pointed out all the flaws in it,
and the article is still misleading. ;) Futuresource intentionally cherry-
picked data, basically by excluding... well, most of the PCs schools buy
categorically.

The biggest problem is the lock-in. Given that Google has them in on all of
their hardware, mail, docs, classroom platform, once you decide to go the
cheap route, because $200 laptops sound like a good idea, it's really hard to
escape. You guys are basically the 90s Microsoft of the 10s.

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arkitaip
If Alphabet wants to do goodwill marketing, so be it. But doing so at the
expense of their employees is kinda shitty. Did employees at least have the
option to select which charity to donate to?

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mgiannopoulos
They didn't announce it so is it really marketing?

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qbrass
It's more effective marketing when people don't believe it's marketing.

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mgiannopoulos
What's the average salary at Google? Does getting a Google Home or even a
Pixel (which they can easily afford imho) really mean something to the
employee?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Probably not, but it's a nice thing to do. Telling everyone you're giving
their gift to someone else is honestly kind of a nasty thing to do, even if
it's a donation. It actually would've been _less bad_ if they didn't tell
their employees their gift was going elsewhere.

~~~
euyyn
I'm pretty happy about it to be honest. The previous years they always let us
choose the "give it to charity" option and I never did. But I much rather a
kid in a poor school get a chromebook, than I get a gadget I can afford.

It's kind of like paying income taxes vs giving to charities. I'd probably
vote for my taxes to go up more than I would increase tomorrow my private
donations, it's psychologically easier.

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automatwon
_The previous years they always let us choose the "give it to charity" option
and I never did. But I much rather a kid in a poor school get a chromebook...
I'd probably vote for my taxes to go up more... it's psychologically easier._

Was clicking a 'give it to charity' option too psychologically hard?

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euyyn
I'm not sure what part of my point you didn't understand.

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no_bad_gifts
Not sure how to feel about this one. On one hand the people who end up with
the gifts will be grateful I'm sure. On the other hand it was at the expense
of the employees, who had no say in it. Maybe they should have been given the
option to donate or receive on a person-to-person basis?

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prodigal_erik
I always thought Google gave out hardware strategically because they wanted
every engineer to easily do side projects targeting, e.g., a phone with up-to-
date Android and a smartwatch. I wonder if this means end-user adoption is now
more important.

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euyyn
Nah, as an employee you probably already have a corporate phone, and I'm sure
you can get a corporate smartwatch too without problem. So it wouldn't really
be an effective strategy.

~~~
greygray
TBH my theory is that Google gave surplus inventory to their employees with
previous holiday gifts (and my understanding is that different countries got
different holiday gifts).

The Pixel phone supply chain is really tight considering you can't even get a
128GB phone right now.

Google Homes seemed to have sold quite well this holiday season as well so the
prospect of conjuring 68000 Google Homes and dispersing them across the world
to the 100+ offices at Google was probably a bit logistically taxing.

