[mattnewton]

I don't think there is anything wrong with the memo saying "we need more people of color in our data set." I hope everyone agrees with that.

What seems to have been bad is the contractor misinforming people about what data would be collected (and for what use), and it's not clear what Google had in their contract to prevent that kind of unethical behavior. It is also very questionable IMO to target the homeless "because they won't talk to the media" which was allegedly in the instructions the contracting firm Randstad gave to it's workers.

Disclaimer: While I work as a low level employee at an unrelated team in Google, my opinions are my own and do not represent those of my employer, and this is the first I am hearing of this.

[DoreenMichele]

It also seems bad to Target the homeless "because they won't talk to the media" or whatever the quote was.

To me, this just parses as "We have some new Politically Correct excuse to exclude poor people from our dataset."

Being so unimportant that the world wants you to remain invisible isn't generally a good thing.

There is always some excuse. There is no condition under which it is sufficiently respectful, politely handled, blah blah blah to be A Good Idea.