[kcorbitt]

Right. As a Google employee, it's awesome the degree to which the company trusts us with future product plans even in divisions totally unrelated to our personal areas of work. Obviously though, as the company grows that makes it more likely that an employee will, intentionally or not, leak those product plans to the public before the big launch. Most internal presentations that include non-public information generally start with a strict reminder that the information is confidential, and we also get reminded about the stopleaks@ email address fairly frequently. I think this is a reasonable price to pay for the level of internal transparency in a company this large.

I've never associated the stopleaks@ address with supressing whistleblowing, and Google's internal culture and morals are such that I suspect would-be whistleblowers would feel more empowered to publicize their grievances here than in most other large companies.

Disclaimer: personal opinions only, not speaking for Google.