Let's not blame a whole company for what some small part of it did.
Google does a lot of good in this world. They were the first "ethical" tech company, the first tech company with "hacker values" at heart. "do no evil" is still a core value there.
Google does a lot of good in this world. They were the first "ethical" tech company, the first tech company with "hacker values" at heart. "do no evil" is still a core value there.
I think it's clear that it wasn't just one small part of Google. Multiple teams were involved in different projects aimed towards the same general goal.
And to the extent that it was a "small part", it's because there was an active effort to try to prevent it from leaking. That hardly counts in their favor.
“ They were the first "ethical" tech company,”
What does that even mean? Unless you equate “ethical” with manipulating their dominant social position to shove a worldview you happen to agree with.
Which is a very… narrow understanding of ethics. As well as convenient, and, historically, trite (socially advantaged person agrees w/ the worldview a social institution imposes that reinforces and explains their privilege)
Read HN from 10 years ago. Posters were gushing about how cool and amazing Google is, how much good they are doing to the tech industry, how more companies should be like than and do ethical things like they do, for example support open standards and source instead of proprietary systems.
They were saying that Google is a company run by techies who value hacking ethics ideals and not by business men who only care about money.
So that was sarcasm? Wow that went over my head. Makes sense though.
Let's absolutely blame them. Titanic power requires titanic responsibility, and requires titanic consequences for shirking or betraying that responsibility.
These companies make a tradeoff, playing fast and loose in order to move faster at their scale. But the consequence of that tradeoff is that, when they do stumble, when they do commit evil, the hammer must come down all the fiercer. Because they knowingly choose a structure and a way of operating that was prone to such outcomes.