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Comment by gerdesj | Hacker News Reader

"Weirdly this feels like a non-issue"

It is.

That page is awful with a hood that keeps flapping around up and down and text that is trying to be true to italics for quotes instead of lots of diacritics and ends up looking badly diseased. Then the letter sidesteps into a memo, which is equally odd and awkward. It's all a bit odd.

S and B (in my very opinionated ... opinion) did create a great thing in Google. I can't fault people trying to make a living and running with the ball to the point where the playing field is not just paved with gold but it nearly redefines what the concept of gold is.

I think they should have retired before "do no evil" was ditched. That would have cemented their status as internet demi-gods. Instead I think their legacy will be

<i>wierdos whot spy on you</i>

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> <i>wierdos whot spy on you</i>

LOL. I agree with a lot of your points but this one really hit home. On this one, the spying, I always wondered how odd or awkward it had to be internally to push new methods, techniques, or initiatives for "improving user experience" (I.e., spying). I interviewed for some Technical Solutions Engineer role at Google a long time ago. I really wanted the job but when asked a couple questions about how I'd technically achieve some goal related to spying on users and I always found myself hesitating, looking at the interviewer, and thinking, "is it ethically okay if I say this?" I can't imagine how the work environment transitioned at Google over the years from "do no evil" to actively fostering spying on users. I have to imagine it happened because there were few if any laws around user privacy while Google was up and coming. But I know Google has good internal controls for privacy, but I have to imagine there were many unethical or borderline conversations in the name of better spying on users data. I'm still trying to get away from Gmail because I know everything I send/receive is parses but the struggle is real. This is in addition to Chrome and an Android phone, not to mention Google search results. What's the risk of all this spying? In sum, what is at risk is the loss of free will. People who don't care because "they have nothing to hide" cannot see the forest for the trees. Then again, I need to make some changes myself. As an ancient Chinese proverb says, "To know, and not to do, is in fact not to know."

>I'm still trying to get away from Gmail because I know everything I send/receive is parses but the struggle is real.

There's the spying, but then there are also the numerous instances where Google simply terminated someone's account for completely random reasons that their automated system picked up. And you literally cannot ever get a human to talk to you at that company unless you manage to create a social media circus. Just semi-recently a bunch of people got permanently banned (that includes gmail, gdrive, everything) because they spammed emotes on a YouTube stream (something that is fairly commonplace on Twitch, at most you'll get a small timeout on that stream). I think most of them got unbanned eventually, but it took like a week and the streamer trying to raise awareness on social media. If something like this happens to you and you're alone, your account is just dust.

Using gmail or google drive isn't just giving Google your data to look at, it also means that everything you don't have a local backup for might be completely inaccessible to you on a whim, forever.

I think it's very likely that they wanted you to question the ethics there. I don't know what your interview was like though.

Googler, opinions are my own.

I don't think trying to select for an ethical core really works. Ultimately, you are either going to go along with the people around you or you are going to stick to some principles that aren't shared by everybody, and in the latter case, you're going to be unsuitable for the job, because you're not running the company.

So looking for evidence of ethics in an interview is just looking for a smooth talking hypocrite, even if you think you really want to.

The point is about asking good questions and having a healthy debate not about arriving with a preconceived “ethical core.”

The one Googler I know personally and have talked to about this stuff seems to have a weird blind spot around privacy and data collection. They're super friendly and happy to discuss products and features, but any questions about keeping data on your own device, limiting data access etc. just gets a blank stare, as if the very concept of "data which Google doesn't track" is nonsensical to them.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. -Upton Sinclair

I'm just now realizing why I might have failed my interviews that I thought I nailed some questions in...

About "don't be evil": It's still very much in there. From: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/

> And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!

The problem was that it was moved from near the top to being near the bottom (though it's own paragraph). Sadly there were lots of very inaccurate headlines like this:

> Google Removes 'Don't Be Evil' Clause From Its Code of Conduct

https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...

It's there on paper, but is is really still there?

I am a Googler, opinions on my own.

The problem with the phrase is that it is very relative depending on your meaning of evil. It's a shifting over time and varies by person.

At the same time it provides a good guiding principle for Google as a whole. You need to think about users in different parts of the world with different ideas of what is good and evil, and try to cater to all of them. It's a really hard problem.

That code have conduct I linked tries to explain how evil is defined and give more concrete principles to follow.

From my experience, no one tries to be evil within Google, and we try to do right by our users. But when you're dealing with products like YouTube and Search with massive amounts of user-generated data, suggesting good answers that satisfy everyone and doesn't generate news headlines is impossible. We do what we can, but when you have billion user products, some people are always going to be pissed at you.

"but when you have billion user products, some people are always going to be pissed at you"

The problem with this narrative (which has been the official line for almost 7-8 years now) is it doesn't cause exaptation or adaptation. It is good enough to hold on to, if the goal is stagnation (which is what has happened with Search - you can point at things like wolframalpha, alpha go, stackexchange, quora, wikipedia, elasticsearch etc etc and ask why if the goal was to organize the worlds info, these things failed to develop internally - Similarly with Youtube - why did they missed being netflix or twitch, how did they not become the default platform for disney). The answer is the Scale has worked against that goal. So you stagnate.

The initial goal was to scale globally. That goal was achieved. After that new goals had to be defined. That did not happen because its hard to define achievable goals at that scale. The only default goal was empire defense - i.e. hold on to scale by hook or crook. For what? Well no great answer to that has been found. Which is hinting that global scale is counter productive to innovation whether technical or moral.

Its kind of like a football team winning the game and then staying on the pitch. Not playing any new games or restarting play. Then saying but guys we won leave us alone now.

I don't blame Google. But I expect Google to lead not to react and be defensive. And to do that the narrative requires honesty.

> Which is hinting that global scale is counter productive to innovation

I'd say not Global Scale per se, but achieving own goals without further goals to work towards. I.E you've achieved everything there is to achieve, what can do you do more?

Bill Gates reinvented himself by tackling humanitarian causes. Googlers set up further missions, e.g. self driving cars or health improvement, but those seem unimpressive comparing to world dominance.

I'm a Xoogler myself, I understand the struggle.

And I agree that I've never known any individual Googler to be evil, or intend to be evil (Although I've seen questionable decision making at times).

But whilst no one Googler is evil, the larger body that is "Google" has turned slightly further towards evil (In my personal definition of the word evil).

It's still nowhere near what I would consider true evil, I would probably go back to Google one day if the opportunity presents itself. But I would argue the Google I see today is less "good" than the Google I saw 5 years ago.

Individual motivation and well intent has nothing to do with the forces that drive a large corporate entity at scale.

Implementing censored search for an oppressive regime or providing research to killer drone programs is quite a different ball than "pissing off a few users".

Megacorps are only driven by one goal: growth. And Google has certainly proven that a lot is flying under the radar way on the wrong side of the good vs. evil dichtonomy.

While valid take here, I don't think it was ever meant to be taken as a literal guiding principle that needed to be written down so clearly as much as do the second thing you said, act as a guiding principle.

To me, the minuta having to be written down was a symptom of the complexity making the simplistic and guiding principle don't be evil useless, which I think mainly was caused by scale and the way the ad industry and personal data practices everywhere have evolved. No need to dig in there, but basically, I think that the fact it's still there doesn't really say much. This isn't to say the problems and scale of Google are easy, for the record. Also not impossible either of course.

Curious, in your 100% personal opinion, do you disagree that the company has more or less "deprecated" it?

> That code have conduct I linked tries to explain how evil is defined

You don't need to define evil for us. Small children know evil when they see it. People are quite capable of gleaning a person's or group of people's intent from their actions.

When you start needing to define what evil is, you've lost the debate entirely.

Just give me what I search for, no filters, no bullshit.

I saw a 4 to 5 year-old child watching the psychological equivalent of a snuff film on YouTube while his mother was working the kitchen at a warung in Ubud. "Don't be evil" means if you knew this sort of thing could happen you should've done absolutely everything you could to prevent it, or simply resigned your post at the company.

Evil to most people is obvious. But where money is concerned few "Googler" could do the right thing even if they wanted out of fear of biting the hand that feeds six-figure salaries in exchange for obstinate servitude.

Was it ever really there for the entire time period between the founding and when it was moved to a lower part of the page?

I don't know, I wasn't there the whole time :)

Oh, and if you try to organize people speaking up, you'll be fired.

> > And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!

How does this fit in the narrative, when the ones speaking up (right or wrong, that's not the issue here) are being fired?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/technology/Google-union-c...

Google kept deprecating its use of the phrase "don't be evil" and now almost a footnote in its code of conduct.

As if remaining part of code of conduct doc promotes evil. Please ...

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