“You drive the car. We’re in charge of the steering wheel and gear-shift.” That about sums up the arrangement between Sundar Pichai and the founders.
3
I have always been a capitalist, but I now believe there is such a thing as "too rich."
The amount of money these two men have is obscene.
After a billion, everything else should go to help the poor.
5
Google has attacked and threatened both national democracy by allowing malicious political propaganda be propagated on its platforms (like YouTube), and local democracy, by absorbing the ad revenue that used to flow to regional newspapers, the last line of defense against corruption at the state and city level.
Google also manipulates search results to favor its own products and bury its rivals. They have invested in creating software tools of repression and censorship for autocratic regimes like China. And now they are ruthlessly quashing dissent amongst the few principled employees they have left.
And now Google wants our private medical data, without our explicit consent, as exposed by whistleblowers. Ordinary Americans need to get alarmed by this rogue corporation and need to vote for candidates prepared to confront them and mitigate the damage they do, the ethical norms they flout, the taxes they avoid and the regulatory oversight they manage to avoid through armies of corrupt lobbyists.
2
The Chinese, those that can afford it, retire by 50. That's young enough to do something else with their lives.
Google needs to be broken up – and the hegemony of big tech in general needs to be confronted for the surveillance system it has become at the expense of individual civil rights, privacy rights, and the power to actually own and control our personal data (and now even biometric information with the unchecked advancement of facial recognition software.) "First do no evil" what a joke! The presumptive entitlement and arrogance in the tech industry is appalling! They have made millions upon billions raping peoples' personal information – of any and all sort – just to sell advertising and develop algorithms that track individuals, rate their status, and bundle a life like so much bit coin. What is happening in China is beginning to happen here: Orwell's worst nightmare, only in the United States it is happening more insidiously – in an ever creeping manner – facial recognition software at Lowe's self-checkout – as our government fails to implement a 21st century bill of privacy and consumer rights to deal with the overarching incursion of technology into our lives. I am not anti-tech. Technology has contributed many positive advances in different fields. But I am anti-surveillance and I firmly believe we need higher ethical standards applied to the use of technology, especially as AI advances. Google has been at the forefront of all of this. It's time to check their unfettered authority.
1
Sergey Brin and Larry Page created an entity that enticed us all to see the future as cool and exciting. As time has passed, however, it turns out that entity was a scourge that has worked tirelessly to enslave us. Using a combination of new technological powers of data gathering, retrieval and analysis along with psychology and economics, that entity has proven that the common man will give up their freedom in exchange for convenience.
4
Page and Brin, with help from Eric Schmidt and other employees, created what is arguably the most successful business in history. Billions of people benefit from Google’s search, maps, YouTube and other offerings - which are mostly free to the users. Some of us who were adults before 2000 remember how much more difficult driving and transit directions and information gathering were before those innovations. Yes, there have been some unintended adverse consequences from those innovations, just as there have been in the wake of other major innovations. However, most of the commenters here decry Google’s founders as malign persons who detract from society. American Innovation and success used to be celebrated, not denigrated. Societies where success is generally denigrated eventually achieve less of it. Beware of what you seek.
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@Barry I appreciate Google and have used their services for many years. One thing I do recall over the years is that many of the core “Google Services” were acquisitions. Google Maps (Where 2 Technologies) Google Earth (Keyhole), Waze (Waze Mobile Ltd.) even Docs was a combination of two acquisitions (Writely and XL2Web). YouTube, another acquisition. I am not saying that Google doesn’t innovate, but most of their services, including Android, were built by many innovative individuals outside of Google and gladly joined the Google brand and became extremely wealthy at the same time.
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@Barry as someone who vividly remembers the epoch pre-Google, I would argue that these innovations you're lauding haven't necessarily made our lives any better, simply different. Sure, I don't have to think about how to maneuver through time and space any longer, because Google Maps makes it so easy and mindless, but the cost to me is that Google knows and remembers forever where I've traveled, my interests, contacts, etc. Admittedly, the world is at my fingertips within my smartphone, but also at Google's as well. It's an asymmetrical relationship whereby Google knows everything about me, yet I only know what Google is willing to share with me. Add the knowledge that others have granted Google and that asymmetry grows exponentially. I'd gladly give up every piece of innovation Google has wrought and go back to that era. Not because the innovation isn't cool, it absolutely is cool, but rather that it's usefulness has been leveraged asymmetrically to favor Google much more than society. Google is in fact one substantial reason our country faces political crises. Their data has been used against us to fracture, faction and isolate us.
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@Mark Kramer
While google maps came before Waze. But they did use Waze to help improve it.
1
Google has gone dark and in a less positive direction.
Trying to silence or censure employees, stopping employees meetings, monitoring and selling every click and search people make, is not the way to move forward in the next decade.
Haven't they learned anything?
The Founders' waning leadership explains some of the wrong direction.
The company needs a complete reset and I don't believe they now have the right leadership. They seem to be going dark and off the rails, much like Facebook.
4
Google is yet another example of two tech guys with nothing more than a narrow tech education setting out to do the right thing but failing along the way to stay true to their original aspirations. It’s no coincidence that the founders were experts in the science and engineering of things but had no yen or training in the philosophical aspects of their actions. A great slogan “Do no evil” ultimately becomes an empty one when you have no appreciation for what goes into the making of evil. At this time when Page and Brin step down, their original nemesis (Microsoft), once considered the ‘evil empire’, has reinvented itself and handed that dubious mantle over to Google and its new age siblings like Facebook and Amazon.
7
Within the past few months I have found Google to be horrible. I get Google updates for my android phone and it just gets worse. I'm inundated with ads and spam. And Google doesn't seem to know the difference between spam and what should or should not belong in my primary inbox. I'm starting to think that Google has a bunch of stoners in their tech department.
4
One of Mr. Brin's and Mr. Page's colleagues said that their different skill sets combined made them, together, a whole person. Having followed their management of Google for years, I'd dispute that. Together they made one supremely powerful technologist. That's a long way from being a whole person.
10
All I want is to be able to turn off the camera, microphone, GPS and other features that can be used to track me. Then easily turn them back on when I need them. They are never going to give us this unless we make them. It's like the 60s and seat belts. We had to force Detroit to put them in.
13
This is all you need to know.
“They retain a majority of the company’s voting shares, which will give them effective control over the board”
And the main problem in Silicon Valley. There’s absolutely no effective oversight.
31
@Erik Detiger This is purely a corporate decision. Separation of roles - CEO manages and Board representing owners and voting rights takes policy deicisions and give directions to CEO and his tea,. CEO is also on the board. A standard practice in management, good for Google.
@Erik Detiger
Soon the Letters will tire of them, change their mind and drop support.
@Erik Detiger Aside the the law, lawsuits/torts, stockholders and the board, you are right.
I don't like the evolution of the company from one open to its employees insights and sentiments to being a pure money grubber.
21
Oh, good.
Maybe now they can stop being evil.
8
There is more to this story than what meets the eye. Something else is going on behind the covers. We will learn soon enough.
Since technology has betrayed democracy, stolen the privacy of the American people one takes whatever they say with more than a grain of salt.
Google technology is based on clicks =money=large pay outs to Senior male executives who abuse women. No one has forgotten the scandals and more that will be revealed
28
@Tony and any other commenters who may want a deep dive into Google’s transition from a Search product aimed to help its users to a without-permission personal data extractor which sells its users’ data and behaviors (ie life) to the highest third party bidder, you may want to read this:
“The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” by Shoshana Zuboff, a Harvard Business School Professor. I’m about a quarter way through it; enlightening.
Amongst other questions it poses is: how do our government oversight agencies (Department of Defense etc) monitor and hold accountable Google if much of those departments’ data collection and surveillance systems, on which the departments heavily rely, are Google’s (having been developed hand-in-hand with Google over the past several decades).
6
Rats always flee sinking ships. Google is probably going to be broken up soon.
12
@Corbin I think once the name of a company becomes a verb that company is fairly secure.
Have they fired any more employees who want to form a union? Unfortunate that Google management has chosen to be evil.
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Best wishes to these two world-shakers.
12