[napierzaza]

Yes, but I don't think they can spin it as a "rogue team" really. If it is a team inside Google. That's Google's fault. It doesn't matter whether it's Google's fault because they have poor oversight or too much freedom or because they hire people who are criminal.

[jrockway]

Google is not 100% perfect. If things aren't broken, you're not trying hard enough to push the envelope. The cost of innovation is failure.

In other words, this doesn't surprise me. And it doesn't bother me, either.

[pbhjpbhj]

It doesn't bother you if Google, the company, is committing crimes?

The cost of innovation isn't becoming a crook.

[jrockway]

No, some regular person at Google behaved unethically. If Google locked down their employees enough to prevent this (which I doubt is even possible), then they wouldn't be able to do anything good either. You're saying: one mistake in a tiny branch office, entire global company goes out of business.

[potatolicious]

> " You're saying: one mistake in a tiny branch office, entire global company goes out of business."

I don't see that anywhere in the posts above.

I can't speak for other posters, but the price of letting your employees have the freedom to act according to their own initiative is that sometimes, people will fuck up, and the damage may not just be contained to your own company.

Of course, giving employees freedom also means more innovation, fast progress, and generally more happiness.

So the idea is that Google can't just reap the benefits of high-employee-freedom, they also need to bear the responsibilities for the inevitable damage it causes. These employees, acting on behalf of Google, did something bad, and caused real, quantifiable damage to another business - Google needs to take responsibility for this, and I don't just mean a mea culpa on a blog.

[jrockway]

What should they do?

[potatolicious]

Well, hard to say seeing as how the jury's still out on exactly what happened.

If it was a rogue team in Google, there are a few things that come to mind:

- Google needs to refund all customers they acquired via this process and alert them that they were duped.

- Google needs to call every single business that the rogue team called and inform of what happened, and that Google is not affiliated with Mocality in any way whatsoever. Any fraudulent or deceptive claims that Google allegedly made against Mocality also needs to be addressed and recanted - to every single business that Google scraped and called.

A blanket apology and correction, on a site that the vast majority of these businesses will never read, is simply a cop out and wholly insufficient.

[pbhjpbhj]

>You're saying: one mistake in a tiny branch office, entire global company goes out of business.

Nope I'm trying to temper your outlandish general statements; and failing.

napierzaza said, roughly, it was Googles fault if they hired criminals and those people were acting criminally either through lack of oversight or otherwise. You said something along the lines of it being expected that Google would commit crimes and that this is merely the cost of innovation. I asked if Google inc. acting criminally bothered you and you appeared to answer that it didn't that it was impossible for them to do good without also committing 'evil'.

TBH I can't really believe anyone who values the rule of law (particular its equal application) could countenance such a position. So, do you believe that rich corporations should be immune from the laws that bind the rest of us?

Hypothetical: If an employee in McDonald's overcharges all the customers do you think that McDonald's/the franchisee is completely devoid of responsibility because it was "just an employee"?

[jrockway]

Hypothetical: If an employee in McDonald's overcharges all the customers do you think that McDonald's/the franchisee is completely devoid of responsibility because it was "just an employee"?

That's a good example. But there's a difference between harming your customers and harming your competitors. In the case of McDonalds' hypothetical actions, the solution is to give your customers their money back and a few free burgers. But what can Google do to make up for their mistake here? Go back in time and not hire the individuals that fucked up?

[heresy]

It's fairly obvious what they should do: apologise publicly and to the people who they misrepresented themselves to.

Not in the Anglosphere where the actual people affected will never know of their wrongdoing.

Not throw their hands up in the air and blame human nature, sorry for the inconvenience.

Every act like this where they do not take a principled stand, dilutes the value of that Don't Be Evil motto a little more, until one day it will essentially be meaningless.

[waterlesscloud]

So what you're saying is that this corporation is made up of people?

[waterlesscloud]

Like it or not, that is what he's saying.

[shadowfox]

You know, up until this comment of yours, it hadn't bothered me that you were an employee of google defending their actions most of the time on HN. I still assumed you were being somewhat objective.

But I have finally lost that trust. It is extremely hard to believe your objectivity when you equate what happened with "pushing the envelope" and "innovation".