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Comment by beaner | Hacker News Reader

What is evil about this?

Perhaps it would be better to ask an employee who 8 months ago may have started a family on the strength of a loud endorsement to move manufacturing back home. What's the real harm? Just a few empty promises, no laws broken and a mere 700 dashed spirits, but it's all worthwhile in pursuit of the dream - whatever it happens to be this quarter.

So they should do what the army does, and spend billions to produce tanks that end up somewhere in the desert because the army doesn't want them, and it may cause some job loss?

Of course not, that wouldn't be good business, but we're not concerned with that here. The parent comment asks what is evil about it, which is to ask whether it is moral to spend millions on an advertising campaign that implies job security, and less than a year later turn those same jobs into a fire sale.

There is a huge continuum of possibilities for how the Motorola sale should play out, but when the reality is an extremely profitable corporation pulling the rug from under 700 low wage contractors with minimal notice, despite explicitly claiming the contrary less than a year previous, just setting fire to the building and walking away somehow strikes me as a particularly immoral outcome.

So they should instead do what?

It's too late to do anything about it now, but I also think it was in kind of in bad faith for Google management to play up this whole Motorola enterprise as "bringing back tech manufacturing jobs to the U.S." and Texas specifically with big press events replete with politicians and all of that stuff.

Business is business and perhaps folks who were encouraged by that kind of dog-and-pony show are rubes anyhow, but it feels very "un-Googly" for them to have gone that route PR-wise if they weren't seriously committed to it and it's pretty clear they weren't.

If Google had done nothing, would those jobs likely have remained in the US? If not, what is the complaint here?

The complaint is simply that Google repeatedly and intentionally signaled a big public commitment to creating tech manufacturing jobs and selling American-made cell phones and this couldn't have been their actual intention.

There's nothing else to do or say, really. Rightly or wrongly Google has an image of being different than most politicians and corporations and so that's why people are disappointed. I get why they did what they did, I just don't think they needed the political, PR head fake.

Isn't the obvious interpretation of what happened here that Google wanted to create tech manufacturing jobs in the US, spent an enormous amount of money trying to create tech manufacturing jobs in the US, and simply failed?

And, that being the case, it's very relevant to ask "what would have happened had Google not tried to do this?". From what I can tell, the answer is "those people who are losing their jobs due to this plant closure would have lost those jobs earlier."

Having closely followed the activities of Motorola and what Google's been doing with it post-acquisition, it's (now) obvious to me they were always trying to safely unwind it & protect the rest of their hardware partners[1]. The upside that they were hoping for was that the IP portfolio would be a good defensive weapon against Apple instead of an offensive one against other Android ODMs, but that didn't pan out. They were never expecting to be a major ODM themselves for the long haul.

You're right that the contractors working at that facility may have gotten their walking papers earlier had Google had not come around post-Nokia (it was a most recently a Nokia plant - not a Motorola one, IIRC), so there is that to be said.

Again, my complaint is that it's just terrible optics for Schmidt et. al, to have signaled a commitment to growing U.S. manufacturing and then sold this enterprise not 2 full quarters from tepid launch of a toned-down flagship that didn't even get full support from the parent company's management.[2]

Additionally, Google did not really spend an "enormous" amount of money creating tech manufacturing jobs. They shrunk Motorola and phased out numerous lines and support for them and released thousands of Mobility workers before even launching the Moto X.

Yes, this might have happened anyway, but it's not like they were trying to grow the business organically. They were winding it down (and getting it ready for sale) while talking about growing it.

They were also able to take advantage of Motorola's losses to offset their own corporate tax liability and I'm sure they got manufacturing credits in Texas on that plant, which is why they had Gov. Rick Perry and all the cameras there and played up the whole "bringing back jobs" angle even though they were all temporary contractors.

[1] http://www.unwiredview.com/2011/08/11/motorolas-sanjay-jha-o...

[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/motorolas-super-powered-googl...

I'm sorry but this is bullshit.. the obvious interpretation is that Google wanted the patents and ended up with a business line they weren't interested in. Leveraging it for PR the way they did was insincere at best, especially on such a short timeframe.

Also it's entirely unclear to me what the outcome might have been for Motorola as a whole, had Google not been having wet dreams about its patent portfolio. Perhaps you have some insight here that you're not sharing?

Maybe you should take it up with your local government.

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