Don't Be Evil, a gaggle of Googlers tell CEO Pichai amid mega layoffs

More than 1,400 Alphabet staffers have signed an open letter urging CEO Sundar Pichai to reconsider aspects of the current redundancy process and remember the last line of its code of conduct: "Don't Be Evil." Google parent Alphabet announced in January that 12,000 heads – 6 percent of the workforce – would roll because it had …

[alain williams]

"Don't be evil" is long forgotten

It has been ignored since Larry Page and Sergey Brin ceded day to day control to the money men. All that the money men care about is money (especially money in their pockets). They do not care who they hurt or what laws they break - as long as they are not caught and fined.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Don't be evil" is long forgotten

You forget that being caught and fined doesn't exactly matter provided profit minus loss still lands on a favourable side.

Plenty of companies caught cheating that haven't really felt pain. VW, Union Carbide, Exxon, and a vast quantity of others. If you want change, vote with your cash and encourage others to do same.

[Steve Button]

Re: "Don't be evil" is long forgotten

The thing I find really strange is that techies are willing to believe that "being caught and fined" is just the price of doing business when it comes to Google and the other big tech companies, however they don't have the same level of cynicism when it comes to pharmaceutical companies. Even though Pfizer got fined $2.3 BILLION for pushing addictive opioids onto people.

However, they made far more than that in profit, so just the cost of doing business.

But for the last couple of years they just wanted to help people?

(and by suggesting that they have tried to cover things up, or that there has been vaccine damage / death, or Pfraud in the trials can get you censored by all the Big Tech companies as misinformation, even if it's true - except Twitter now)

Even just last Friday Andrew Bridgen gave a speech in parliament about vaccine damage, and this was taken down by YouTube (until after an outcry, when it was put back up again). So, it's STILL happening.

[jgard]

Re: "Don't be evil" is long forgotten

I can give you a couple reasons why people don’t react as you think they should.

Firstly, if you’re looking to someone who will further your cause, you need to do a LOT better than a right wing reactionary potato farmer called Andrew Bridgen. The conspiracy-loving, lying, gobshite MP, of whom even most Tories are embarrassed of.

A high-calibre, trustworthy and deeply honest man who:

”was embroiled in controversy in April 2022 when he was found guilty of lying under oath in a High Court case over claims about a multimillion-pound family dispute. The judge said he was so dishonest that his claims could not be taken at face value.

In January 2023 he was suspended from the House of Commons for five days after he was found to have breached the MPs' code of conduct by lobbying ministers for commercial gain. In the same week, he had the Conservative whip withdrawn for spreading misinformation about the Covid vaccination programme, comparing it in a tweet to the Holocaust.”

Hmmmmmm......

Secondly, anti-vax, anti-pharma types have a natural ability to dissuade others from joining their cause. Why? Well, they lack common sense and judgment, and very likely invest in other conspiracies too. Like most conspiracy enthusiasts, they see confirmation bias as a virtue, and see any evidence against their viewpoint as further proof they’re being lied to. They also find it difficult not to keep quiet about their views and tell us all that we’re the real sheep etc. They jump at the chance to push their anti-vax nonsense in even the most irrelevant situations, e.g. in a comment on the Register, responding to a story about Google and their HR policies.

Seriously, you couldn’t make it up!

[Steve Button]

Re: "Don't be evil" is long forgotten

I've read your post and all I can see are ad hominin attacks and childish name calling. Apart from the bit about Bridgen being found guilty of lying under oath in a High Court case, I didn't know about that and haven't looked into it. I'm surprised he's still a sitting MP, if that's the case? Anyway, not really the point. He IS still a sitting MP, and so it should not be up to Google to censor his speech in the House of Commons, should it? That was just one example of one person, there have been many more.

The real question is why do you seem to blindly trust Pharma companies? Do you actually think they have our best interests at heart? I don't trust them, I don't trust the banks and I don't trust Big Tech. Not because of gut instinct, but because of their terrible track record.

Why is this such a hard thing to grasp? Is it because some right-wing people have said it, and therefore it must be wrong? Is it because "anti-vax, anti-pharma types" have typically been hippy dippy people, who don't trust science? (yes, there ARE a quite a few people like that, and the whole MMR thing didn't help).

However, MMR anti-vax types and Covid anti-vax "types" are not necessarily the same. Having had all my jabs and then taken TWO of the Covid shots, I've looked at the stats and thought holy shit, any other drug would have been pulled off the market after causing this proportion of adverse reaction.

The point about Google and their HR policies is that the staff are touting the whole "don't be evil" thing when it comes to THEIR jobs, but they don't give two shits when it comes to freedom of speech and censorship.

[eldakka]

Re: "Don't be evil" is long forgotten

> so it should not be up to Google to censor his speech in the House of Commons, should it?

Google - in this case it's Youtube subsidary - is a private platform and gets to chose what and what not it carries on its platform. It is not a public platform thus has no obligation to carry any material on it.

[Steve Button]

Re: "Don't be evil" is long forgotten

Ah, the old "it's a private company" argument.

The thing is, if the government is leaning on every single platform, to get them to censor free speech for things they don't like (even when they are demonstrably true), that's a big problem, no?

Twitter, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and all the others regularly received lists of users that the government didn't like. Such as Alex Berenson.

The thing is that the social media platforms are the new "public square" and if the government is able to censor all the big ones, that's a really big free speech issue.

And then the government makes big hints like "Here's a list of people we don't like. It's a really nice platform you've got there, it would be a shame if anyone came along and regulated against that"

Are you telling me you think it's actually just ay-oh-kayy for YouTube to censor a sitting MP who is delivering a speech in the House of Commons?

Seriously?

[eldakka]

Re: "Don't be evil" is long forgotten

> Ah, the old "it's a private company" argument.

Why yes, I tend to find factual and legally correct (per court-set precedents) arguments persuasive.

> The thing is that the social media platforms are the new "public square"

And proveably factually wrong and and proveably legally invalid arguments as unpersuasive, no matter how much you believe them. Your belief in this legally disproven doctrine is factually irrelevant.

> Are you telling me you think it's actually just ay-oh-kayy for YouTube to censor a sitting MP who is delivering a speech in the House of Commons?

That is not what happened, at all, therefore your question is misleading in the "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" way.

Youtube is not censoring the MP, YouTube in no way intereferred with the MP giving that speech in parliament. It was broadcast live via Hansard question time, there is a transcript of the speech on Hansard, multiple sources picked it up and re-broadcast it. YouTube declined to allow (at that time) re-broadcast on its platform. Let me say that again, re-broadcast on YouTube's platform. It did not go into parliament and instruct the MP to stop talking. It did not prevent the live broadcast on the parliament CCTV system or 'question time' broadcast of that on services that usually broadcast question time. It did not interfere with other broadcasters/platforms re-broadcasting that speech. It merely refused to participate in re-broadcasting. That is not censorship.

> Seriously?

Very.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Don't be evil" is long forgotten

You forget that being caught and fined doesn't exactly matter provided profit minus loss still lands on a favourable side.

.. and it helps if you can control what people get back from a search on the Internet too..

[ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo]

In proper societies, ...

firing people on medical or maternity leave would be plain illegal.

-> Where's the legal book on this?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: In proper societies, ...

They're not being fired, they're being laid off, and it's also legal in other countries.

In France, for example, a person in one of those situations would be put on the list, and the actual termination of employment would happen at the point when their leave ends and they wouild have returned to work.

[Ideasource]

Re: In proper societies, ...

Potato po tah tow.

Whether you're fired or laid off it's still translates to an emergency for the workers.

[doublelayer]

Re: In proper societies, ...

The effects are the same. The causes are different, which is why there is a distinction. Fire someone because they're on leave: not allowed. Make someone redundant whether or not they're on leave: allowed. There may be differences about when that starts to apply, but since it's not connected to their being on leave and would have happened to them if they were actively working at the time, as it has to thousands who were not on leave, the rules don't forbid it. You can suggest they should be different, but there is still a large difference.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: In proper societies, ...

Exactly, and being laid off usually means a severance package and other assistance. Being fired is usually the consequence of something the employee has done and rarely comes with any package or other protection.

[Blackjack]

Ehem.

"Don't Be Evil."

https://www.androidauthority.com/google-dont-be-evil-code-of-conduct-867476/

Google removed that years ago.

https://blog.searchscene.com/google-don-t-be-evil-motto-what-went-wrong/

[TVU]

" "We call on you and Alphabet more broadly to make these critical public commitments. Our company has long touted its commitment to doing right by its users and workers, and these commitments will show Alphabet adhering to the final line of its Code of Conduct: Don't Be Evil."

Unfortunately for you, when Page and Brin sold out both their souls and business, Pichai's Code of Conduct is now, "Just Be Evil".

[Anonymous Coward]

Just Be Evil

is why I avoid them as much as possible.

Perhaps if more people wised up to their nefarious business practices then more people would avoid them like the plague.

Amazon and Microsoft are nearly as bad as the clear market leader, Google aka Chocolate Factory.

[fidodogbreath]

Don't Be Evil, a gaggle of Googlers tell CEO

The peasants are so quaint.

[Persona]

Re: Don't Be Evil, a gaggle of Googlers tell CEO

..... and 1,400 of the peasants have just volunteered themselves for the next round of redundancies.

[Howard Sway]

some shareholders are agitating for change, and want Alphabet to go even further

These shareholders should be careful what they wish for. The "sack workers to boost the share price" model can backfire terribly over the long run for tech companies, just look at the story of IBM over the past 20 years if you need to understand why. There are plenty of smart techies at Google : they could very well end up somewhere else with ideas that eat Google's lunch in the marketplace, and how's the value of your shares going to hold up then?

[Michael Strorm]

Re: some shareholders are agitating for change, and want Alphabet to go even further

The type of shareholders pushing for this sort of thing aren't the sort who plan on holding them for 20 years, and never were.

Quite the opposite, using short-term measures to temporarily pump up the share price then getting out before the shit hits the fan is the whole point.

[Claptrap314]

Re: some shareholders are agitating for change, and want Alphabet to go even further

I was at IBM 20 years ago. If you think that "sack the workers to boost the share price" was what has caused their downfall, you have no idea just how toxic the situation there was for many of us.

The place was a hot mess of hot messes.

[Martin-73]

I think it has been over a decade now...

Google LONG ago dropped the 'Don't' bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares. Due to their increasingly crap search results, I don't use google as a verb any more. Or anything else.

[Martin-73]

yeah, first page full of sponsored crap not even vaguely related to what you searched for... ugh

[localzuk]

Self-organising hit list?

So, these petitioners have handed their bosses a list of the people to get rid of next. How helpful of them...