[skybrian]

I don't know one way or the other, but this proves too much. You're talking about this like Google is the Borg and everyone always has the same opinions. It's certainly possible some of the people in the room at the time actually were motivated by free speech issues.

I agree about not trusting corporate PR, but the conclusion is that we don't know the company's motivations and it's probably a mistake to treat it as a consistent entity. Executives come and go. Sometimes they win arguments and sometimes they lose them. Sometimes they change their minds over the years.

[knuththetruth]

Whether or not people at Google have different opinions is largely irrelevant, unless they’re going to engage in coordinated labor action like they did with the drone program.

Google, despite all its townhalls and Q&As, is not a democracy. It’s a corporation governed by an authoritarian command hierarchy who have seemingly chosen to get in bed with another authoritarian regime called the Chinese government.

[skybrian]

There is a large middle ground between democracy and purely top-down command. I was actually talking about disagreement among executives. In an environment where people respect each others' opinions and areas of expertise, you don't need coordinated labor action for that to influence top-level decision-making.

The fact that this all has been kept secret (even from the rest of the organization) and that it leaked are both evidence for internal political divisions. Internal politics does matter, sometimes. I wonder what happens now that more Googlers know about it?

[BrandonMarc]

> unless they’re going to engage in coordinated labor action like they did with the drone program.

What was this?

[svachalek]

I believe this is in reference to employees quitting over the company's participation in the development of artificially intelligent weapons.

[knuththetruth]

That was a big part of it, but there were also several other coordinated, internal campaigns. Here’s a good account by one of the Googlers involved:

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/06/google-project-maven-military...