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Comment by m90 | Hacker News Reader

Just like people repeatedly breaking the windows of a coffee shop nearby because the owners are "bankers from London" (this was stated as the #1 selling point for boycot in a flyer) this entire movement exposes the worst Kreuzberg has to offer: an incredibly self-righteous xenophobia.

People think they are so incredibly open minded when they are pro refugees, but as soon as it's the "wrong kind of Ausländer" (the one where it's not possible to impose moral standards as easily as it's not possible to exploit their need for protection anymore) it's all evil all of a sudden.

People will need to realize that they will need to be welcoming to either everyone or noone, everything else is just bigotry. Let's be welcoming to everyone I would propose.

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I think you might be missing the bigger picture. 5 years ago these views would not have found any traction because nearly everyone loved Google. The general level of hatred in the community towards Google has increased significantly in that time. In my estimation this is due entirely to Google's own behavior since Sundar Pichai became CEO. When your CEO has an inability to resolve conflict in the direction of positive sum solutions, the losers of the zero sum game are going to hate you intensely and will certainly not come to your defense when you are attacked.

I honestly doubt that any other CEO would have made any difference.

Google's business model is fundamentally based on data mining as much as possible about their users, and what's changed in the past couple years is (a) a much greater awareness of the potential negative consequences of this data collection and (b) the sense that the American internet giants are becoming unstoppable juggernauts.

The hate against Google was inevitable.

> Google's business model is fundamentally based on data mining

You see, the point is, it doesn’t have to be.

Not without being a completely different company. Google earns 90 percent of its revenue from advertising, and the amount they would be able to earn would go down significantly if they weren't able to provide highly granular targeting info to their advertisers.

Saying "the point is, it doesn't have to be" is like saying "Apple doesn't have to be a designed-focused company." True, they don't have to be, but they are, and that is a huge reason they are successful.

There is truth to this. I would suggest, however, that it is at least theoretically possible to maintain good will and strong relationships with the community, even as your power grows, so long as the bonds of trust are rock solid. The most effective way I know to do that is to refuse to contribute to the polarization and by always choosing to be on the side of the win-win solution.

By firing James Damore, by allowing YouTube videos to be demonetized for holding the wrong opinions, etc. Sundar Pichai has destroyed the bonds of trust. It takes backbone to stand up to the ideologically possessed who are determined to play the zero sum game and to persuade them that their needs can be more sustainably met by other means. Sundar Pichai has no backbone! Nobody has any respect for a weak leader who habitually chooses the easiest path without regard to the long term consequences.

Sorry, but I think this is complete BS. Sundar Pichai was put into an absolute no-win situation with the James Damore issue. While I agree a lot of the reaction to Damore's "manifesto" seemed knee-jerk and groupthink, I absolutely think that anyone with half an ounce of emotional intelligence should have anticipated that reaction, and should have known that writing that as he did would have been completely counter-productive and cause a huge shit show for the company.

Do you honestly believe that if Pichai had kept Damore around that it would have engendered good relationships with "the community"? If so I hate to break to you but "the community" is a lot more than people who think like you.

Uncomfortable situations can be perceived as “no-win” situations or as “huge opportunities” depending on what your aim is and how committed you are to achieving it. It could have been used as an opportunity to show the world how to resolve the polarization that plagues us by forcing the 2 sides to talk until a mutually acceptable resolution was achieved and the team could unify in support of a mission of contribution instead of turning against each other. The ability to bring people together is what makes you are leader. Even if you were on the winning side of the zero sum game, you will never rest well if you have weak leader. A man who will easily bend to the will of a handful of radical feminists is unlikely suddenly grow a backbone when facing a much stronger opponent like Donald Trump.

What hypocrites! Welcoming war refugees but not an extension of one of the world's largest corporations.

They aren't hyprocrites at all. Of course is not the CITY that is against Google, it's a group of people, as always. It's much a safer bet that this crew is against refugees even more (which BTW I agree 100%).

That's not what they're saying. They don't want Google specifically, for reasons they detail in-depth on their website. Being welcoming to everyone doesn't really work, or otherwise we wouldn't have prisons.

Being open-minded is a two way street, remember.

I don't know if you live in the area (I only work there), but this is a recurring pattern that has happened quite a few times over the last years, not only to Google. Everything that is a. wealthy and b. from abroad will receive instant hatred. I talked to a few of these people and unfortunately it's only a very short way to conspiracy theories and open antisemitism surfacing.

If you show up being German and wealthy, treatment will be way different unfortunately.

These patterns are likely to happen in times of extreme wealth inequality. Many people point the finger at Google and the like, and they may have a good case.

> If you show up being German and wealthy, treatment will be way different unfortunately.

Try being wealthy while Swabian in Berlin.

They might hate you for the money, but you won't be dragged into the depths of paranoid conspiracy theories about "wall street" taking over. Which, to me, makes a huge difference.

People could list all sorts of reasons they don't want specific types of people. That doesn't mean they're right.

It doesn't mean they're automatically wrong, either. Not sure you're saying much. They created a whole website to outline their argument.

One is a tax dodging multinational, the other are human beings.

You're missing the point entirely.

I don't really think you can compare "multi-national megacorp" with refugees.

It's not like they said "People who are working at Google or have worked at Google are not welcome" - for me this is a clear message to Google, the company.

I don't have a real opinion on the matter per se, so please don't take this as taking a position.

Lumping together people and corporations is questionable.

The page itself does this by calling out "tech bros".

I don't know much about this movement, but Google employees are not at all comparable to refugees; that's not a valid comparison.

In the end they're all people I'd argue.

Sounds like London - people are open-minded as long as you tick the boxes to meet the requirements for being open-minded about. They fancy themselves open-minded but are really just mindlessly following another fad.

Well it is a form of a fortified society. Google is a threat in form of displacement of the people there by financial means. Invulnerability of ones home is a constitutional right regardless of if you’re an owner or just a renter.

You must not be accepting to those that destroy your society: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

>>People will need to realize that they will need to be welcoming to either everyone or noone, everything else is just bigotry

If an individual or company violates prevailing prosocial norms within a community (not paying taxes in either case), the community reserves the right to remove them. If a company or individual threatens the long-term well being of the community (e.g. the business ecosystem) the community has the right to reject them. In the limit this is obvious (and provides a fairly robust counter-example to "Let's be welcoming to everyone"): a company can reject criminal or criminal organizations. Google's tax avoidance behavior has been pretty clearly antisocial (e.g. the double Irish Dutch sandwich arrangement), and arguably criminal.

There are limits on Uber in Germany and limits on AirBnB in Berlin (IIRC it is not Germany-wide) for exactly this reason. It seems that Berliners are similarly worried about negative externalities entailed by Google establishing a campus there. If Google is willing to conform to community standards it may well have a place there. But that would probably require paying some back-owed taxes :)

Ah, appealing to the "gesundes Volksempfinden" to get rid of unwanted people?

> It seems that Berliners

No, it's just some racist people operating a web site. They even suggest shooting Google ("bullets for Google", https://fuckoffgoogle.de/wp-content/uploads/photo-gallery/Ku...).

I'll wait a bit to see if they will make the connection to the Jewish world conspiracy (often refered to as "wall street", "financial elite" in such circles).

> I'll wait a bit to see if they will make the connection to the Jewish world conspiracy (often refered to as "wall street", "financial elite" in such circles).

This is very important. It's so deeply rooted in all of this it has me full of disgust. But apparently it's ok as long as you're german and you're not making rap music.

Ah, the old “hating rich people is the same as racism” defense.

Ah, the old "my hateful violent behavior isn't literally racism" defence.

> People will need to realize that they will need to be welcoming to either everyone or noone, everything else is just bigotry.

AFAICT, Germany hasn't accused the NSA of doing anything illegal after the Snowden revelations. Should Germany be welcoming to the NSA in your opinion, lest Germany be accused of bigotry?

If the answer is that it is a separate issue because the NSA is a government agency of a nation-state and not a citizen, then I think good faith requires that you grant FUGoogle an edge case to your argument as well. After all, the argument they are putting forward is that Google is a powerful organization that surveils, censors, and avoids paying taxes. (Also, they make the argument that Google can't legally say no to participating in U.S. wide-net surveillance programs.)

Argue the substance, of which there is much, but please don't branch off into, "They came for Google and I said nothing." It's low effort.

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