
Google Drops Out of Pentagon's $10B Cloud Competition - logronoide
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-08/google-drops-out-of-pentagon-s-10-billion-cloud-competition
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notyourwork
This makes me suspect Amazon's HQ2 is almost certainly going to be Washington
D.C. Furthermore, gives me impression the reason it took so long to commit to
a date to announce HQ2 is because they were waiting on whether or not this
type of contact might be elicited. Having a massive government contract is a
prime reason for having a large physical presence near by.

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dogma1138
Wouldn’t Virginia be a better location for an HQ in that case?

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dsfyu404ed
Yes. It will probably be in the DC area, not literally in DC.

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gadders
Would that research triangle place around Raleigh be close enough?

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fosco
not sure why this is down voted.

having lived in Northern Virginia aka NOVA which is where a lot of businesses
have offices and would be the potential area of HQ2, Research Triangle park is
a tech hub for North Carolina that also afford lower wages compares to NOVA or
other urbanized areas and I would consider 'in the area' of DC. Maryland is
also an overlooked option which also has many datacenters.

NOVA is much more likely due to it meeting travel requirements much easier.

NOVA also already has many giant datacenters and already houses complexes for
companies like VISA in addition to being one of the major backbones in the USA
of the internet.

I would prefer the HQ be closer to NY, Boston or Toronto but that is a long
shot I think unless the political climate forces them to make an unpredictable
decision.

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zeveb
> I would prefer the HQ be closer to NY, Boston or Toronto

While anywhere east of the Mississippi is going to be a rude awakening
compared to Washington, Oregon, California, Colorad, Utah, Wyoming &c., New
York, Massachusetts, Canada or Maryland would be _far_ worse than Virginia,
due to sclerotic governance. Virginia’s bad compared to the western half of
the country, but those places are even worse.

The eastern seaboard has over 400 years of accumulated regulations, rent-
seeking and 'we've always done it that way!'; Virginia is _relatively_ better
than the alternatives. If there's not a better argument for automatically-
sunsetting laws than the East Coast, I don't know what it is.

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fosco
>Virginia is relatively better than the alternatives.

Having lived in Northern VA for 7 years I do not think NOVA is any different
than > New York, Massachusetts, Canada or Maryland

in fact - out of that group....Maryland is far better than Northern VA in
regards to governance... which is the only place in VA I could possible
imagine.... especially with the location of international airports being a
requirement. In Maryland...the BWI airport in my opinion has poor
transportation options in my opinion unless Amazon is okay with employees
driving instead of using trains/buses.

In any case... what we say does not impact what HQ2 will choose... I hope...
unless the decision makers are reading this, in which case -- its time to get
real and build your own island in international waters and stop this bs with
choosing somewhere in NA :-)

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p0rkbelly
Let's be real. Google would not hesitate to sell G-suite/Google Docs to the
Pentagon and any US military ally in the world.

How many orders or strategy doctrines are delivered via e-mail/spreadsheets?

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village-idiot
From what I hear from the soldiers I know: far too many.

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adtac
But hey, at least enemies of the state can deliver targetted ads to the the
Secretary of Defence, right in their email!

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golergka
You can always avoid that with a private server though.

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iofiiiiiiiii
"Oops, we forgot to get certified for this moneymaker contract. What do we do,
Harry?"

"Why, Sally, you know what to do - claim this is a decision entirely based on
ethics!"

~~~
amelius
"We messed up security in Google+ and it's all over the news. Now we'll never
get that Pentagon contract. It will make us look even worse."

"Hey, we'll just back out ourselves and claim it's because of ethics"

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dna_polymerase
Not buying their moral arguments at all, given that they are about to enter
the Chinese market again, after backing out of it, supposedly because of moral
concerns.

A while back an article surfaced here [0] about how the JEDI competition is
basically tailored to AWS, and how Amazon had lobbyists stipulate the exact
conditions.

[0]: [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/has-bezos-become-
mor...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/has-bezos-become-more-
powerful-in-dc-than-trump)

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philwelch
> Not buying their moral arguments at all, given that they are about to enter
> the Chinese market again

Their "moral" concerns are driven by the noisy section of their workforce that
reflexively opposes the US military. These people aren't outspoken about the
behavior of the Chinese government, in fact they probably don't think about it
much.

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mattnewton
I should probably keep my mouth shut, but as a Google employee I can assure
you I am concerned about both and I am not alone. My views are my own, etc

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jtl999
Thanks for what you do.

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Strongerpass
What did he do?

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snarfy
I'm going to laugh, then sigh, when Oracle wins it.

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webninja
Or IBM :(

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tinkerteller
What was wrong with evil ‘ol Plantir? Thiel had been waiting for his reward
since he wagged his tail for Trump.

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ElBarto
The article strongly suggests that everyone is far behind AWS and that they
therefore think that any such large contract is unwinnable.

Tough.

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trhway
not only technically-wise. From what i see and hear Google has significant
impedance mismatch between internal "googliness" and the "enterprise" style
required to do business in the enterprise/gov/mil space. Just imagine a
Google's $1M+/year AI PhD doing a support call with a bodyshop consultant
maintaining a laundry services accounts payable application for some small
Army base.

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tanilama
TBH, I don't think Google stand a solid chance winning it either. Their
offering is not the best, and there isn't good wills from the current
administration either.

Even though issues regarding big techs nowadays are all high politicized, but
Google stands in the centre of the current political radicalization in US.
Their means are extremely restricted.

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ardy42
> TBH, I don't think Google stand a solid chance winning it either. Their
> offering is not the best, and there isn't good wills from the current
> administration either.

IIRC, the current administration has _less_ goodwill towards Amazon because
its CEO owns the Washington Post. I don't think that was a factor.

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marpstar
It's both Amazon (because Bezos owns the Post) and Google (because of Eric
Schmidt's close ties with the DNC).

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writepub
What's wall street doing about Google's hostage situation - held hostage by
their own outraged employees.

Two publicly documented big opportunities missed so far - the Pentagon missile
deal and to an extent this. Maybe the China search engine opportunity is also
at risk. Time for Wall Street to sell Google, and let their opinion be known!

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webninja
I own many voting shares in Google and I support them whenever they decide to
choose whichever side they think benefits humanity more. They have good heads
on their shoulders and I trust their decision making. Google oftentimes is
just trying to make the world a better place and fill missing needs. Say what
negativity you want but the world would sorely miss them if they weren’t
around.

If you want a stock that soaks up DOD contracts, pick up Raytheon. I have a
friend that works there and he can’t tell anyone what he does there.

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Tepix
The first good thing I've read about Google in a while. A change in direction,
perhaps?

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cronz
Why is this good? (I'm not American)

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Tepix
Because they are taking ethics into account (or claim to be).

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swarnie_
Lets me really honest, they pulled out because they couldn't compete with
Amazons offering. Google is driven by profits and growth just like any other
company.

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codq
You’re being downvoted, but you’re almost certainly correct.

“If someone’s going to do it, it might as well be us” is about the extent of
corporate ethics.

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golemiprague
I don't understand what is so moral about not selling stuff to the army, as if
google are not enjoying the protection this army provides them. I would say it
is even less moral, you let other people do the dirty work for you. They
should give a discount to the army as a thank you for the sacrifice the people
in the army are sacrificing for a fraction of the salary someone in google is
earning. I mean, I know googlers still have PTSD from the Damore thingy and
that they are still recovering from the trauma in a safe space designed for
that, but still, fighting in a remote country for half an year is at least as
hard?

