It just goes to show that a large company is made up of many different people in different departments, sometimes with different agendas. It appears that there is a conflict of vision within Google.
The e-mails referenced in the article were unsolicited policy preferences communicated by a multi-billion dollar company to a regulator in writing. These communications were sent following a PR and HR crisis. The chances that this didn't have high-level sign-off is virtually zero.
First, you have the timing wrong. " In filings in May 2017 "
IE before a PR and HR crisis or whatever you want to call it.
Second, it was solicited, as they were written as a legal response to a legal claim.
Third, claiming that expresses a policy preference is silly.
Do you believe that criminal defense attorneys express a policy preference that say, murder is okay?
If you go and read the actual filing, and other filings, here's an actual fact for you:
Google is literally making the same defense that others before the NLRB are.
So if you want the outrage, i suggest you direct it at everyone.
Like, i can find filings from various "loved" open source companies that make the same argument, etc.
Conceded. Pardon me--cannot edit the original comment.
> it was solicited, as they were written as a legal response to a legal claim
Do we know these filings were in response to a legal claim? It could have been in response to something more frivolous. (I am having trouble finding the filing.)
> Do you believe that criminal defense attorneys express a policy preference that say, murder is okay?
One, this isn't a criminal matter. It isn't even being judicially decided. These are confidential regulatory proceedings.
Two, when criminal defense attorneys defend a murder suspect, they don't advocate overturning murder statute. There is a wide berth between arguing against the facts and circumstances of a case and arguing for overturning a law.
Three, I've been in senior roles at companies in regulatory deliberations and litigation. Each time, company counsel briefed senior management on the arguments they were preparing. More than once, someone asked if an argument was essential. Once, it was. (It was maintained.) Another time, it wasn't. Concerned about a client relationship getting caught in the cross-fire, the argument was dropped and the case amended.
When you give a shit about a constituency, you don't argue for overturning their rights.
Yes, it is in front of proceeding at the NLRB that they have to exhaust before they can file in court.
"Two, when criminal defense attorneys defend a murder suspect, they don't advocate overturning murder statute. There is a wide berth between arguing against the facts and circumstances of a case and arguing for overturning a law."
Oh come now. Every single lawyer worth his salt is going to argue the law should be overturned when it doesn't favor their client. I'm very surprised you are trying to claim otherwise. Even in criminal proceedings there is almost always a "this statute is unconstitutional on its face" argument thrown in, even when that statute is something like "protect children from being run over by cars". This is similarly true in the civil proceedings of the kind we are talking about - just about every regulatory action has arguments about the propriety of existing case law or statutes.
"Three, I've been in senior roles at companies in regulatory deliberations and litigation. Each time, company counsel briefed senior management on the arguments they were preparing. More than once, someone asked if an argument was essential. Once, it was. (It was maintained.) Another time, it wasn't. Concerned about a client relationship getting caught in the cross-fire, the argument was dropped and the case amended."
FWIW: I have been in multiple large companies in that role (for 8+ years), and nobody would ever brief senior management on a claim like this one. It's way too low level.
"When you give a shit about a constituency, you don't argue for overturning their rights."
I'm glad this is all very black and white to you and that you can easily reduce complex situations to quips and feel like it does it justice. I wish i could feel that way. It would actually make life a lot easier.
There are no right answers in these situations, only shitty tradeoffs.
(It's not even as simple as:
Don't make argument, allow/pay out frivolous claim which hurts current constituents.
vs
Make argument, destroy constituent rights )
Companies have lee-way in where they make those trade-offs. Just because a company could argue to roll back back rights for gays or women doesn't mean they have to. And if they choose to advocate for rolling back protective rules, they'll deservedly get flack.
> FWIW: I have been in multiple large companies in that role (for 8+ years), and nobody would ever brief senior management on a claim like this one. It's way too low level.
This might say more about the corporate cultures you've been exposed to than what is normal or right.
Accepting your argument, we have a multi-billion dollar tech company, rightfully in the political cross-hairs, viewing its workers' rights as "way too low level" to merit management's attention. Furthermore, following a first-hand experience with why such organization rules are important, the official response is shying away from a defense. Nothing in the way of meaningful action.
I don't know how easy that would be for you to do, but if it's quick, I think that would be a very useful data point.
Mind sharing?
- looking to move into China and create a censored search engine blocking offensive search terms like "human rights" [1]
- the above search engine would also tie users' searches to their phone numbers for ease of tracking
- tracking users' location on phones when tracking was set to disabled (we're back to everywhere - not just China on this one)
- looking to implement change that would disable most ad-blockers
- lobbying the government restrict employees' rights to organize against it
And this is just a list of things from the past several months. It is seriously not comprehensive. No, I think Google has quite a clear agenda, a great PR department, and a whole bunch of people in cognitive dissonance who want to believe the PR rather than acknowledge what they're taking part in.
---
edit : Added a source for first point. It's borderline unbelievable, but it was not rhetorical. Human rights (in Mandarin of course) was literally on Google's black list of terms.
[1] - https://theintercept.com/2018/09/14/google-china-prototype-l...
The people filing NRLB complaints probably disagree with you about the morality of all your bullet points above, and they're claiming they were discriminated against for disagreeing with the consensus.
I wonder if that changes progressives' opinions on the topic?
So which is it? Speech is protected or speech should be punished?
This is the norm.—the wonderful things some Google employees produce are the exception.
So what you saying is that two departments in a big company can have their own attorneys and/or publicists and approach government agencies on their own without a higher approval?
In this case, both the saying of soothing things to the people who are complaining, AND lobbying the government to make those complaints less effective in the future are in line with the real goal: maximizing the success of the company, as measured by profits. When viewed through this lens, these actions do not conflict. In fact, BOTH are REQUIRED.
These only APPEAR to conflict when you think that top leadership actually REALLY cares about anything other than money, and the influence it brings.
It's predatory no doubt, and Google certainly can't be considered an honest broker. But this dichotomy is necessary in today's hysterical environment that social media has created.
It sucks.
You can't accuse someone of something for which you would never accept anything as evidence in their defense.
Perhaps re-labeling major (and unprecedented) communication/organization platforms from "businesses" to something akin to "utilities"—or, more radically, "platform coops"—would quash such apologia.
But that's not how he runs that company -- which is the point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing is an example.
Perhaps, but when then chips are down and Google is obliged to file their position on pain of perjury it is clear which 'vision' is real and which is window dressing.