[bluk]

The key quote in the Verge article is:

"Carolyn Wang, communications lead for Verily, told The Verge that the “triage website” was initially only going to be made available to health care workers instead of the general public. Now that it has been announced the way it was, however, anybody will be able to visit it, she said. But the tool will only be able to direct people to “pilot sites” for testing in the Bay Area, though Wang says Verily hopes to expand it beyond California “over time.”"

From https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21179118/google-coronavir...

From this quote and the behavior of Google's communications team (whether Google or Verily), you can assume that Google/Verily were caught off guard by the announcement of Google's involvement. Whether it was Google's original intent or not, it seems Google is trying to make the best of the situation now.

[fragmede]

What you said is all true, which is what makes the focus on Alphabet/Google mixup so out of touch. There are so many other problems, that focusing on a mistake about the details of Google's corporate structure seems like focusing on the alignment of the deck-chairs on the Titanic.

I will very readily admit that I've not made a huge distinction between Alphabet, Google, and Verily. And for that matter Waymo, the Google self-driving car project. Or is that the Alphabet self-driving car project. I have no idea, without checking Wikipedia, if Project Loon (Internet-via-weather-balloon) is a Project of Google or an Alphabet subsidiary, or some other legal shenanigans.

There are so many other things going wrong right now that I am severely disappointed that the Verge wasted any words talking about the distinction between Alphabet and Google, no matter how much I may, or may not, like the individual that confused the two.

[appleshore]

I feel like this debate is analogous to the test kits being rejected from 3rd parties, if that’s what happened. We’re lost in bureaucratic technicalities.

Verily was a division of Google X before Alphabet. It’s effectively Google Life Sciences minus the corporate advantages of the Alphabet structure.

Maybe Kushner or the President wanted to encourage Google, or maybe a speechwriter over exaggerated it. Or maybe the President lied. But when the media ultra parses the controversy to make every element the nth degree worse for him, it makes it hard to believe in objectivity at all.

[sdenton4]

...or maybe trump heard something in a briefing and said what he thought he understood, instead of what he'd been told. And without, you know, coordinating or having the speech fact checked before delivering it to millions of people. The dude doesn't do process... See also, walking back the "no trade with Europe" thing a few days ago.

He doesn't get a lot of slack (outside the right wing machine) because he's repeatedly foot-gunned in dramatic and damaging ways.

[appleshore]

It was Kushner. I live in CA and President Trump isn’t hated here as one would think from the media.

[foobarbecue]

You must not live in my part of CA!

[appleshore]

As Tim Pool said, California is the king of greed. A lot of rich people secretly support him and working class people who have to deal with the societal breakdown that is California politics.

4.5 million people or 32% of the voters in CA voted for President Trump in 2016. Democracies of uneducated masses (on both sides) don’t make any one side intrinsically right. Cue Socrates.

[Der_Einzige]

That's why Socrates tells you that you become valid to run society when you become dialectically educated enough, and that the unwashed masses do not see reality for how it is as a result of a lack of dialectical education and therefore should not rule.

Sounds pretty much like authoritarian rationalism to me. I'd like a pass on platonic republicanism but unfortunately it's found within all forms of Western philosophy these days