Hacker News Reader

> I'm not sure if you're a Google PR drone or just naive, but people have been talking about this for years...

Do you really believe Google has PR people that are paid to reply on posts on HN? It could be, but I find this quite incredible.

(Saying this as an Eng Googler, I have absolutely no insight on how the whole "business" side of the organisation works.)

View on HN

Especially here of all places. I can't think of many sites where PR-fueled statements would be countered more, and there are enough "real" Googlers around to provide that insight already.

The fact that real Googlers post here eliminates the need for PR to post. Google employees are participants willing supporting Google in exchange for money so they are incentivized to post only good things about Google or risk violating policy/getting fired. They are even incentivized to scrutinize every negative post about Google because it's an attack on their livelihood and moral choices (whether or not to continue working there).

I'm not suggesting the dead post's particular case is true. I'm just pointing out that it's a company's dream to have engineers voluntarily spending time on a forum like this where they have identified themselves as employees. They are implicitly doing PR for free.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com