[pmoriarty]

"What should be a fairly reasonable question – is this person a good employee or not is immediately contaminated by questions they have nothing to do with job performance."

There are all sorts of non-performance considerations that are important, not just at Google, but at pretty much every other company.

One of those considerations is ethics. Another is legality. Another is public relations.

Which of these do you think companies should ignore?

[metabagel]

I thought those are also job performance considerations?

[pmoriarty]

If they are job performance considerations, then what is the person I replied to talking about?

[InTheArena]

Ideological conformance. Google has a particular world view that insists that privacy is not a human right, that certain political positions are verboten and unions are bad.