[PunchTornado]

> One of the workers set up notifications to receive emails detailing the work and whereabouts of other employees without their knowledge or consent.

This is shady/creepy. There is no need to know when and where a colleague is every hour, every day. You shouldn’t be allowed to do this.

I’m glad an employee who does this is getting fired because I wouldn’t feel safe around them.

My calendar is public, but that doesn’t mean you should be alerted every time I go somewhere.

[LeonB]

Google is a company based on surveillance. It crawls the entire world‘s data. It makes money by delivering messages to people you’ve never met based on the intelligence they’ve gathered about the people. They give you free tools for instrumenting websites to gather more intel about people, which is then stored on their servers. And the calendar notification claim relates to using a google product in the exact way it was designed to be used (and reads like lawyers grasping for a safe technicality.) It’s a bit unsavoury imo.

[nova22033]

Google is a company based on surveillance. It crawls the entire world‘s data

You make it sound more nefarious that it is. If you don't want your data to be crawled, there's an easy solution. Even Rupert Murdoch, who complains about google all the time, won't take the simple step necessary to stop google from crawling the WSJ website.

[tomrod]

It is nefarious. Just because the elephant in the room hasn't stepped in you yet doesn't mean it isn't there.

[thundergolfer]

Where are you quoting that from? I just string searched it in the article and got nothing.

[cowsandmilk]

The Bloomberg article doesn’t have that exact quote, but has the google memo with the allegations https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-25/google-fi...

[Fiadliel]

HN link for that article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636583

[PunchTornado]

>> In one case, among other information they accessed and copied, an individual subscribed to the calendars of a wide range of employees outside of their work group. The individual set up notifications so that they received emails detailing the work and whereabouts of those employees, including personal matters such as 1:1s, medical appointments and family activities — all without those employees’ knowledge or consent. When the affected Googlers discovered this, many reported that they felt scared or unsafe, and requested to work from another location. Screenshots of some of their calendars, including their names and details, subsequently made their way outside the company.