Google made plans to target the EU official in charge of digital policy updates | Hacker News Reader

Google made plans to target the EU official in charge of digital policy updates

arstechnica.com

181 pointssho_hn104 comments

> Google said Mr. Pichai and Mr. Breton “had a frank, but open conversation about plans to update digital policy in Europe.”

This (and the rest of the article) reads like it was discussing a conflict between the leaders of two different countries, but let's stop for a second and remind ourselves that we are talking about a a) political unit governing the lives of 450m people and b) a company.

No company should be big enough to be considered an equal partner in a conversation like this. This kind of narrative is not new, but it's becoming a norm that people take for granted without realising how perverse it is.

If Mr. Pichai would say he is currently begging Mr. Breton to leave Google as is he would give Alphabet stockholders sufficient reason to annul him.

"No company should be big enough to..." is a bit of a philosophical musing, but since the world we have has allowed for companies grow to this size and to own and dominate our data as they have, what other solutions would you have in mind to update digital policy that don't involve also speaking to the people at the helm of the very organizations that are holding most of said data? You wouldn't at least discuss the topic with them?

I don't think it's meant to be a criticism of the act itself, but what the fact that it's necessary represents. I imagine the proposed solution would be closer to "break up google" than "stop talking to google"

Why not just break up all tech giants? Why single out Google?

It would make more sense to just tax them..

I’m sure you could invent any reason if you needed to, given this is a political question rather than a purely economic one.

For example, while I think of Apple as just a luxury goods company, the fact they make high-end phones means they are an obvious security target for anyone who wants to hack high-value individuals in general. I can easily believe some would want to take it into government ownership just for the increased government oversight opportunities alone, even in a liberal capitalist society.

Because we are talking about Google today: they were the subject of the article; we shouldn't have to generalize every single statement.

> we are talking about Google today

We were talking only about Google yesterday and probably will tomorrow too, but sure "we are talking about Google today".

And we were also, separately, talking about Apple all week, and we spent the past year talking about Facebook. What is your point? (Actually, looking at your comments you seem to spend all your time talking about Google, so I am guessing you are a Google shill and probably work for them or something :/.)

This is like the “#alllivesmatter” response. Sure, there are other giants and all too big companies should be improved with various interventions. But the article is about google and eu, so bringing up that this also applies to all big giants is not very interesting.

Of course google has unique problems that no other tech giant has since no one else controls search.

King Philip IV of France took a practical approach in dealing with a similar problem. [Two days ago], Friday the 13th, was the 713th anniversary of his solution to the thorny problem of sovreign conflicts with powerful transnational organizations. That is the day he smashed the Templars in France.

Philip tweeted: "Dieu n'est pas content, nous avons des ennemis de la foi dans le Royaume"

("God is not pleased. We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom")

Are you proposing that the EU government should murder all Google employees in the EU in order to consolidate its own power and control?

Why do you make than inflammatory analogy ? Even Philip IV didn't kill all templars, only the senior leadership. The rank and file templars joined other orders.

It draws attention to the inflammatory premise of the original comment, that Google ought to be thankful France isn't taking "a practical approach". A king murdering the leaders of an organization that got in his way is not a positive example of regulatory power!

> Philip tweeted ...

Wow. Twitter sure has been around a lot longer than most people realised. ;)

> King Philip IV of France took a practical approach in dealing with a similar problem.

AFAIK his problem was slighly different—he owed them money :)

Jack Ma,too, thought he was big enough to take on China's leaders. It didn't worked out as planned.

All EU has to do is let the process play itself and unleash the dozens of EU agencies that deal with these things.

There’s occasions where a single entity will basically dictate how a country gets structured [0] in key aspects.

To me the most important part is how long that power is concentrated (a few years ? decades ? three generations ?) and how it ends up counterbalanced.

It seems to be about time for Google and Amazon.

[0] https://www.britannica.com/biography/J-P-Morgan

I can’t get behind this vision of the government as something that’s fundamentally above the rest of us. I’d argue that every company should be considered an equal partner in a conversation like this, to the greatest extent feasible. (And I’d argue the EU official here seems to agree - he mentions in the article that he wants to “hear and listen to everybody”.)

Their employees can vote like the rest of us does

I can choose to drop Google any second. Dropping the EU government, on the other hand...

Also, the EU has failed to produce any viable alternative to Google mostly because of our shitty laws. Let's not pretend the hegemony of Google is some kind of imperialism that was forced on us.

> I can choose to drop Google any second.

Good luck with that, Google is everywhere (search, maps, mobile phones, and many more). You have to make a lot of effort to avoid it.

It is far easier to drop EU government because elections happen every few years. In case of Google you don't have elections (or maybe you have, but it is shareholder voting, so more like plutocracy).

You don't have to make any effort to avoid it. Picking up your phone is effort you're making to meet it, simply stop doing that.

You can switch to Bing or DDG in less than one second. Good luck doing that with the EU.

Try searching in bing for movie trailers or for other videos (e. g. home workout) how many results will be for YouTube? And you still think there is no effort?

I can move out of EU or vote to change it. I don't have that power with Google.

You are seriously saying it’s easier to move out of the EU or to replace the EU government, than it is not to use Google?

Yes it is. Have you tried e.g. for a week to never use ANY service that is from Google?

Normally people thing it is just search, but search is just the tip of the iceberg.

In case of EU, you just need to wait max 5 years for next elections and you can have your input by voting (in case of Google you can send your input to /dev/null of their automated "customer service").

Would you be able to avoid (just for one week):

- google analytics,

- GCP (this one is hard),

- youtube,

- google dns servers,

- android without any google services (or just iOS, this one might be easier if you already have iPhone, but for majority of people it is not easy),

- adwords/adsense

- fonts

- translate

- pay (again, easier of you are iPhone user)

- photos

- maps

- charts (you can have link to those on web pages)

- chrome

- gmail (if you don't have account there then it is easy, if you have - it is almost impossible to change your email address everywhere)

And also imagine a person that is an "average Joe", has cheap Android phone, uses Chrome without any ad blocking and has email account in gmail.

Would it be easy for him? Or would it be easier to go voting? Or find a job in neighboring country that doesn't belong to EU (e.g. Switzerland or Norway, not sure if UK counts right now) ?

Well if you are going to say he has to use a cheap Android phone and a gmail account, then obviously he can’t avoid Google, but that’s not much of an argument.

Nobody is really restricted in that way.

It’s obviously much easier to buy an iPhone and install an ad-blocker than it is to get a new job in Switzerland or Norway if you don’t already live there.

Have you actually looked at at what it takes to emigrate to Switzerland?

As for your list, of course you can’t stop other people from using Google. We’re talking about not using Google yourself.

The move to different country is one time deal. Avoiding Google for the rest of your life is a constant job.

I didn't say that the "Joe" has to use cheap Android phone and gmail account. I just said that he has one already because one is cheap and the other is free. So imagine that he used both for several years.

And now he can change that, but is it easy? Buying iPhone is easy (not cheap, but moving out is also not cheap), but changing your email address in zillion places is next to impossible.

Most people can’t drop google at any time. They can’t afford buying a new phone, buying a new computer (all those chrome book users), and everything else.

Being able to transition off google has become a privilege that’s especially difficult on low income folks.

You're forgetting a privilege to have a cheap phone, free maps, free decent email provider, cheap usable computer etc. It's possible thanks to Google. Of course it's costly to transition the same way it would be costly to get those services if Google wasn't around.

> cheap phone

Had one before android existed.

> free decent email provider,

Still use the same I used before gmail was a thing.

> cheap usable computer etc

I cannot comprehend from what kind of twisted alternate reality this claim hails.

Or did you simply forget to mark your sarcasm with /s ?

Then you can use those options as Google didn't exist. The thing is the quality is so much better thanks to them people choose the products. The phone you had before Android wouldn't fulfill a purpose people buy phones these days. If you don't remember how much better Gmail was than email providers back in the day I don't know what to tell you.

A phone or a computer is not a basic human need. But even then, maybe let's use the EU to provide open phones instead of destroying the only thing available?

"U.N. Report Declares Internet Access a Human Right"

https://www.wired.com/2011/06/internet-a-human-right/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Internet_access

My country's constitution nor the EU have such claims anywhere. The UN can say whatever it wants, it's not an authority here.

It is an authority just not for you.

That's what I said, it's not an authority here, neither for me or my government.

People are totally cut off from modern society without some kind of phone or computer. I’m not sure you can say they are not a basic human need.

What would count as basic human needs, according to your country’s constitution?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human...

> I can choose to drop Google any second

> failed to produce any viable alternative to Google

These two statements seem to be in conflict

In what way? You can use duckduckgo, iOS, etc. The EU has failed to produce a good search engine and a good mobile operating system.

Talk about hyperbolic comparisons and nonsense excuses

In which country of the world can you "choose to drop your government any second"?

Though feel free to drop Google, if you can

There are a ton of better/worse alternatives to various google products. Aside from networking effects, noone needs to use google at all, right now.

You cannot operate on the internet and drop google. This isn’t possible because you live in an interconnected world.

Unless you’re a hermit who disconnects entirely from the web, you can’t drop them.

You may cancel all your accounts, but you’ll still visit sites that use google analytics, interact with hosts that use Google’s registrars for their domain names, be profiled by google and included in targeted advertising by web sites that you don’t even know.

You’ll also be impacted by the incentives google puts on content creators through their de facto standards of chrome, web video, drm, etc.

I’d say it’s easier to drop the EU than Google. You can move to Britain or elsewhere and escape EU laws. You can’t go anywhere on the internet to escape Google’s laws.

> I can choose to drop Google any second

This is true, bit misses the point.

The point is that through whatever means, but including cheating, Google has become incredibly, obscenely powerful.

And one of the many reasons that is undesirable is the aforementioned cheating.

> We are talking about a a) political unit governing the lives of 450m people and b) a company.

No, We are talking about a a) political unit governing the lives of 450m people and b) a company affecting the lives of 2 billion.

Why, when we reading article about leaked information, why don't we get to see original leaked document, and only presented with the conclusions of the author. I'd like to make my own conclusions. Might be i spot something that author missed, or interpret things differently. Now i only get two quotes from document (presentation) "increase pushback" and "reset narrative"

If you keep you pay enough attention, I think you'd find that primary sources have nearly completely disappeared from the news media. They'd much rather tell you what to think, rather than risk having you make your own mind up.

Generally speaking, uploading the original unaltered document is a great way of accidentally outing your source, since often printed materials and even digital copies have some sort of uniquely identifying marks.

It's also an amazing way to provide context and sabotage the narrative agenda the news article is pushing. We can't have that kind of nuance in modern media.

You say this as if it was ever the case in pre-modern media either.

Extremely valid point, I'd consider this close to table stakes.

Also, in some more "interesting" settings there's also exploit-loaded documents to be aware of, here's from a leak I've been following lately:

> If you really want to open a Word document from Psy-Group, please go ahead, knock yourself out. Below are the links to the Word document as well as the email. Just remember that Mr. [...] mistake might have been opening a Word file from Psy-Group in the first place…

I took the liberty to remove the name as I guess that particular guy is probably suffering enough at the moment.

Documents may also have a unique wording for each recipient and the source could be easily identified by that by whoever created a document.

The full English prose text, minus headers or footers, would still provide almost all required contest to inform the reader without the fingerprinting.

Then inevitably somebody would complain that the original document wording might have been altered.

As opposed to a PDF scan which can definitely not be forged at all? ;)

Nothing less than a digital signature can prove the integrity of a digital document, and even that is worthless unless the corresponding public key has been publicly made available via a separate and trusted channel, which is unlikely.

Anything that can be used to prove a document's integrity can generally also be used to identify where it came from and how it was produced, which is why we generally don't see any effort to do this at all.

In fact, plenty of things that can't prove a document's integrity can also be used to identify its source, which is why this isn't done; you can't be sure that you've sanitized the document enough to protect the leaker.

What if there are ten variants, all with slightly modified wording, allowing knowing immediately who leaked it?

You don't even need that. Documents have been identified before because some versions replace characters with nearly identical looking but different unicode characters (say, the various variations of spaces, or the semicolon with the Greek question mark.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_character

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_mark#Greek_question_m...

Yes, I've seen that episode of Game of Thrones too :)

First, consider the requirements to set such a trap. The authors of the document need to be actively concerned about a leaker, and to be OK with the document itself being leaked as long as they catch the culprit - at the same time, they need the document to be juicy enough that it will be leaked. They need to share the document in such a way that no two of the suspects will be able to compare notes, otherwise the jig is up. So no putting the file on a common internal resource (unless the server can stealthily serve different versions based on the user's login data); no attachments, else a reply all / forward would reveal the trap; no collaboration; no physical office where two suspects may see each other's copy.

Is that still possible? Yes. But a _lot_ of times it won't be possible, and the would-be leaker will know it's not possible. It's much more likely, and makes much more sense, for critical documents to be shared in such a way that the users _know_ they are fingerprinted, and won't leak them. IIRC, major Hollywood studios do that with their film scripts.

Second, what if the _key phrases_ are slightly altered in each version? Or hell, if your bosses want to finger you so bad, what's if they changed a small factual detail in each version? Then even the journalist quotes would reveal the leaker.

The not-so-great news is that common characters like spaces and semicolons have various similar-looking characters defined in Unicode, which would not be very noticeable to a human but would be noticeable to a machine.

So you just need to do random substitutions that uniquely identify the document and you'll have a fingerprint. It wouldn't be very challenging to do and it wouldn't be very challenging of a record to maintain.

You also don't need to uniquely identify it to a person; you just need to narrow the search space and then apply other techniques that would narrow it down. If it's a version of a document that leaked through an email chain then you've just limited the search space to the recipients, which is still plenty useful.

That’s 90s like, today you get the interpretation either by highly partisan media or big tech.

Conclusions are dangerous, and direct exposure to unregulated information may result in the wrong (potentially dangerous) ones.

You need the disciplined mind of a journalist to filter out the most dangerous elements of context and content so your mind isn't dazzled and deranged by the intricacies of Google's corporate strategies.

But, in all seriousness, there are a number of reasons at play here.

Firstly, they want to increase the friction required for you to leave the site. News publications are all but interchangeable anymore, and if they're reporting a story second-hand, then they don't want you to realize you could get more information by swimming upstream.

Secondly, they want to milk it. There's very little information in this article. If there's anything else worth knowing in the document, they probably want to atomize it into multiple articles to stimulate pageviews.

Thirdly, if you have the document, and the document is short, the journalist likely contributes no value to the system. Short term strategy documents like the one described in the article are often concise and easily consumed by members of the public. The document likely outlines the context in-which it was written, and then contains one or two pages of a proposed strategy (if that, going by the sparseness of the quotes). Almost anybody curious enough to actually read the article beyond the headline would likely be better served by the document itself.

Great journalism has been done over leaked documents. The Snowden leaks involved reams of content produced by intelligence concerning a plethora of subjects, for a diversity of purposes. Weaving that information together into a coherent story that exposed the broad strokes of what the NSA was up to was great journalism.

Likewise, great journalism can be done by distilling and contextualizing singular documents that are long, nuanced, and require domain knowledge.

This likely isn't one of those circumstances. If you had the document, you wouldn't need the writer, who may not even have seen the original document (the story dates at least back to the 29th [0]).

Fourthly, if you had the document, you would be able to check the author's work. This has been an underconsidered thorn in journalist's side for some time. Different publications have different content production policies. A writer may be expected to produce three to four pieces a day. In this context, even when they aren't trying to manipulate information push a narrative or belief on you (though they often are), the writer may only have skimmed the original document before putting out their piece. As a result, they may have been wrong in some essential, or technical manner that astute readers could pick up on.

This would diminish the writer's reputation, as well as the publication, and the journalistic field's.

[0] https://www.gizchina.com/2020/10/29/google-launches-a-new-st...

5) Generally speaking, uploading unaltered documents is a great way to burn your source, since both printed and digital copies of documents can be easily fingerprinted.

Massive one-time dumps like Chelsea Manning's or Edward Snowden's are not the norm when it comes to leaks; leakers often stay at their position for quite some time, and journalists have every incentive to protect their ability to get inside information

The NSA once got handed a copy of a whistleblowed document by a journalist to confirm its authenticity and they tracked the source down within days.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/06/the-m...

This seems moot, as Google is denying neither the existence of this document, nor its tenor.

>It contained a two-month strategy to remove “unreasonable constraints” to Google’s business model and “reset the narrative.” It singled out Mr. Breton, listing one objective to “increase pushback” on the French commissioner in an attempt to weaken support for the proposed plans in Brussels.

A very corporate strategy.

Centralized control means centralized pressure points. The idea that this is "not the way we operate" is laughably upside-down coming from any corporate entity.

"This is not the way we want to be seen to operate"

:-)

It's about plausible deniability, nothing more, really.

And it's not much different from huge companies outsourcing their work to companies managing sweatshops or relying on child labor. They can distance themselves from it if shit hits the fan, but still benefit from, well, slavery.

In the absence of direct responsibility, it's my view that the CEO should be (made) legally and personally responsible for decisions including outsourcing child slavery.

"This isn't us" - Company that wrote the document.

This guy running Google now really seems like he's driving ving it off the cliff. What ever happened to Brin and Page? I'm not following alphabet or google that much, but as if both of them disappeared even during Schmidt reign.

Well, wall street loves Sundar and hates Larry.

(Well, hate is a strong word)

Well, Brin left a little while ago, and his reported habit of screwing his employees in the company massage room might make it seem a bit tone-deaf to invite him back.

Substantiated:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/work/never-men-get-slut-sh...

Heather Cairns: And we didn’t have locks, so you can’t help it if you walk in on people if there’s no lock. Remember, we’re a bunch of twentysomethings except for me—ancient at 35, so there’s some hormones and they’re raging.

Charlie Ayers: H.R. told me that Sergey’s response to it was, “Why not? They’re my employees.” But you don’t have employees for fucking! That’s not what the job is.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/valley-of-genius-exc...

Thank you, I should have included a source for that statement.

Yet another reason to not give people's health data to Google or Alphabet.

Allowing them to pull more dirty tricks is not the right direction.

If you're a citizen of a democracy, exposing yourself to mass manipulation engines run by companies like Google and Facebook is irresponsible.

People like me who avoid these services don't do it just because of the cost to ourselves (which is in many cases minimal) but because of the impact it has to the people around us.

It's not unreasonable for a company to 'push back' on regulatory actions they don't agree with.

Tactics, proportionality, legality - that's what matters here.

If they merely said they were going to 'pushback' there's nothing really wrong here.

If they were hiring a PR firm to slander politicians, well that's really bad.

Well, now that Google’s plans have been exposed, Mr. Breton can rest safely. It’s not like Google has millions of cameras peeking from doorways. Or thousands of two ton autonomous robots roaming the streets...

> Mr. Pichai said he also became aware of it when it became public in the media. He said: “I am sorry it happened that way.” But he said he took full responsibility for the leak and added: “This is not Google.”

I would like a journalist to ask Mr. Pichai two questions:

1. Have you studied Boolean algebra?

2. How is this internal document "not Google"?

Google CEO shoud volunteer a $1bn donation in multiple charities, then fire EVERYONE involved in that process/memo, and then step down because he was either too useless to set the tone that "we in Google don't play like that", and/or he failed to stop this on day1 and/or.. buuusteeeeddddd!!!

Anything else is just an effort trying to save face.

Interestingly, I just got finished watching cutscene movies for Hitnan 1 and 2 (thinking about buying Hutman 3) and this kind of story sounds like a mission, sans bodily harm.

I feel like everyone kinda sorta suspects corporations do this sort of thing (lobbyists et al) so while not surprising it is interesting that this got leaked.

The original story came from a French newspaper lepoint [1] which then was picked up by ft [2].

Google proposed an alliance between booking.com, zal, ubisoft, carrefour,... to launch an advertising campaign to weaken the position of European lawmakers.

The most alarming piece of google's "DSA 60-day plan update" presentation is that they also wanted to mobilise the US government to lobby against it via trade representative offices and embassies.

[1]https://www.lepoint.fr/high-tech-internet/exclusif-comment-g... (paywalled)

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/d9d05b1e-45c0-44b8-a1ba-3aa6d0561...

You can read the article from Le Point here https://www.pressreader.com/france/le-point/20201029/2853748...

> ... they also wanted to mobilise the US government to lobby against it via trade representative offices and embassies.

Seems like they're copying the RIAA and MPAA approach for that bit.

Good, the regulators have to feel the heat. If someone pushes against the interest of the farmers - they dump manure in front of the ministry of Agriculture. The IT world has manure on its own to give away!

I disagree. Wealthy individuals and companies using their money to lobby for their own interests is immoral. Laws should be written on behalf of citizens, not weighted by wealth. Just because this sort of public corruption is business as usual in the US doesn’t make it good. The rest of the world doesn’t want wealthy Americans to have a say in our laws.

Unfortunately a moral and money rarely goes together as many history examples show. Do I understand correct that effectively in a modern economics it's only the US can print money (by Fed)? With that the ruling elite can do whatever needed to prolong its ruling, unfortunately far outside the US borders.

No. Other countries can and do print money. There are other currencies other than the United States dollar.

Farmers actually feed us. Google just wants your mind and attention. No difference then.

That's not fair. You picked an upside and compared it to a downside. That's like saying Google helps information flow, and farmers just want to steal your taxes as corn subsidies.

That's a strange metaphor to make when the farmer (Google and other FAANG?) is a net-negative for the EU digital and publishing economy, not to speak of avoiding taxes.

I mean, that's hard for Google to negociate in their EU position, they can't bring up the jobs since most of their workforce isn't there, they can't bring up the taxes argument since they don't pay them with tax loopholes, they can't say they contribute to the local economy anyways because they don't...

I don't agree with the EU position but there's really no leverage here for Google, it's not a win-win scenario.

I think they do contribute to local economy. Google provides services which make lives of millions of people better. Search and maps are two. Android is another one. It's only thanks to Android being developed people have access to amazingly cheap powerful and useful devices. Maps saves billions for people: you don't need to buy overpriced shitty navi devices anymore. You save tons of time. Android is worth billions for EU citizens as well. Otherwise we would be stuck with shitty quality or overpriced luxury electronics. Search allows customers to not overspend when online shopping at the very least.

Both Google and Amazon make our lives so much better that even if they don't pay any taxes ever again it's worth having them. Of course that they don't pay taxes is a lie (VAT is included in their services and they have tens of thousands of employees in Europe who pay taxes on their salaries, the only thing they don't pay is a corporate tax).

I sure hope Google lobbies for laws. Otherwise we would be stuck with what local lobbies like French or German publishers want and we already know it's a mess way bigger than what Sundar Pichai would come up with if he could write the law himself.

And yes, I realize that what those companies do with privacy is not ideal. Still I remember how it sucked shopping for books in English being a student in a poor country before Amazon came along. I remember how expensive and how terrible experience navi devices were before Google Maps came along. I remember the joy and disbelief when I've first seen Google Earth: a 3d smooth map of the whole world with zoom to top it and it's completely free to use!

Google and Amazon made my life better, saved me tons of money and time, allowed me to get education and entertainment not only better but for fraction of the cost. Meanwhile when I think what EU legislators brought me: cookie law which doesn't change anything but forces me to click on pop-ups like it's 90s again. GDPR which is hot mess of a law which contributed to my life in form of endless forms I have to sign and endless privacy messages I have to listen to. The way it's implemented means I have to waste a lot of time driving now because some companies and doctor offices are no longer willing to communicate by email. Many websites not being available without VPN connection. The next thing EU sets its eyes on is crippling free speech even more. Don't get me started on all the small business killing regulation like VAT MOSS. It would be worse if the regulators didn't feel at least some heat from tech companies.

To be honest, all of those contributions could also attributed to local competitors which are doing the same thing if Google would disappear, there's competitors in the search and maps area, and unlike Google, they do pay taxes and bring local jobs, hence why the commission isn't receptive much to Google's arguments... Additionally the Google competitors in the EU are so small that nobody really cares if those laws do impacts them as well...

Android is probably the only exception indeed but I don't think that's nearly enough of leverage to counter the current trend.

The issue is that Google optimized profit so much in the EU that they even get rid of their leverage there. I do think they are right to fight against those laws (and I'm also personally against them) but let's be fair, at this point nobody cares what Google says in the EU. There's an idea in the EU that impacting Google's business won't impact in any ways the local economy and that's hard to prove them wrong with the way Google is setup.

The problem is EU regulators see industries impacted by Google but forget all the Google users who benefit tremendously from Google existence. It's the same with Amazon. If Amazon was based on Mars, shipped from there and never paid a penny in taxes it would still be valuable to have because cheap quality services make lives better. It's still the case of they kill several inefficient industries along the way. We would all be worse of just so French bookshop or German legacy media publisher can make money again.

if Google is sorry and "this is not the way we operate" then somebody in the company went against the company's ethics and procedures.

Surely there should be a name, VP or SVP, who should be fired.

Somebody under pressure to achieve results in one hand and a ethics code that nobody respects -till exposed- in the other. The result is always the same, big corporations end up behaving independently from the people they are composed.

Isn't it management's task to reign that in? Aren't they responsible?

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