Deconstructing Google´s "Don´t be evil"

Do you remember good old times when Google´s corporate values may be summarized in "Don´t be evil" slogan? The world famous motto was created by two employees back in 2000 and included in the founders´ letter forwarded prior to their initial public offering in 2004.

Things look a bit different now and PR guys must be very busy these months. PRISM scandal is putting them and top US internet companies in a tough position because of their collaboration with NSA, FBI and other agencies. Obviously Google denies the existence of a government backdoor but the accusations started more than two years ago.

It would take weeks to list all controversies related to its privacy policies. Google has been sistematically investigated in every relevant jurisdiction. Stret View service is been fined or even prohibited in many countries but Google Glass is the next revolution that infuriated and increasingly worried data protection authorities will be facing next year.

In May 2013, Google had to deal with a hot potato in UK and other countries regarding their tax policy, that moves most of its profits in Europe through Ireland and the Netherlands to tax haven Bermuda and helped to reduce their overseas effective rate to a tiny 2.4%. Eric Schmidt argued that all they do it is fully compliant with current legislation and it is called capitalism. That is true but I fully agree with Philip Stephens´ argument that after that arrogant statement, Google can´t pretend to be a good corporate citizen.

Google´s decision to launch a censored search service in China in 2006 amid widespread criticism was the first turning point for the "Don´t be evil" motto. They accepted to remove certain sensitive information from the search results including Tiananmen Square protests or sites supporting independence movements of Tibet. But doing business it´s not easy with Chinese guys and in 2010 they moved to Hong Kong to offer uncensored services, after alleged Chinese-originated cyberattacks to its services. 

 

Google´s Books project, an ambitious plan to scan and make readable millions of books, has also been controversial and criticized for copyright violation. Both authors and publishers sued Google and the issue could not be settled in 2008 despite Google´s proposal to pay $125 million. Recently Google reached an agreement with publishers that allow them to choose whether books would be digitized or not. However, the litigation still remains with authors.

Disputes with publishers for copyright accumulate in lawyers offices. Last January they announced a €60 million agreement with French publishers to be dedicated to a digital publishing fund as an alternative solution to pay for Google News links. The company will also help publishers to make money off online adds. Not surprisingly, Google faced a similar fight with German publishers but the solution for this case was different: publishers will have to confirm whether they want to appear in News results. Google decided to turn it to an opt-in system after an amendment in German copyright law. Spain is waiting in the corner.

In the same way, Youtube has faced lawsuits for copyright infringement almost from its creation. Viacom has been the most aggresive plaintiff ... unsuccessfylly so far. There are tons of complaints about the way Youtube handles the unauthorized uploading of copyrighted materials and even allegations that Google profited from pirated content. Company´s response for that is Content ID, a system that creates an ID file for copyrighted video and audio material, stores it in a database and flags a copyright violation notice in case it matches with a video uploaded by a user, which ultimately poses a lot of the work on the right holders side and fails to understand when content is fair use or in public domain. Something similar happens with videos containing defamation, pornography and other controversial content - Youtube rely on users to flag the content as innapropiate. Their argument for not being more proactive is the huge amount of content uploaded every day to the service (more than 60 hours of video every minute).

Moving to a different topic, Google and other internet giants are advocating for net neutrality. They argue that regulation should protect the openness of the Internet and encourage investment in broadband infrastructure. It sounds pretty cool but it seems to be in clear conflict with the lack of transparency of their search algorithm and the accusations and civil actions taken against Google for page ranking manipulations and even worse discrimination of competing services. Actually, Google is facing a serious antitrust case in Europe related to the way the search engine works and whether it abuses of its dominant position in the market. Company´s proposals  for settlement has been recently rejected by EU Competition Commissioner.

 

Google is a great company but there is a problem: is simply too big. Just as an example: today there are over 900 million Android devices in the world when five years ago there were none. And this guys have a big pocket to keep growing to infinite with new adquisitions. This giant size gives you a lot a dominion but great power also corrupts as Eric K. Clemons illustrates in this unmissable article. In my humble opinion, no other company has been so powerful so far.

 

By the way, did you hear the new term googlization? No? Then check Siva Vaidhyanathan blog and discover how does it affect your day-by-day and why you should start to worry unless US and European competition authorities finally realize what is going on.

 

So Google, now that you have become an empire, why don´t you consider shiftting your motto to "Make (a lot of) money and dominate the world"? or "Googlizate everything"? It would definitely be more clear and straightforward ...

 

Finally and for sake of clarity, all posts in the blog reflect my personal views that may not be shared by the company I am working for.

Silicon Valley way of working

Time flies when we are doing what you like. I arrived here four weeks ago and now I´m about to return to Madrid in a few days. My idea was to dive as deep as I was able in the Silicon Valley waters and I believe I´ve done it. It´s been a pretty intense experience. I worked hard but had time to travel around San Francisco and the Bay area as well.

I did also have the opportunity to attend some meetings and events and hence visit the HQ of Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, Hewlett Packard, Mozilla and Twitter. Not bad for a month stay!.

Leaving HP aside, as it may be considered a different animal, the offices of the rest companies mentioned have a similar look&feel and share many features. All employers try to keep workers as happy as they can and make their lifes easier. Having fun in the office is a must. I guess a picture is worth a thousand words.

Snapshot was taken at Linkedin premises (many more pics. and comments on my Twitter account). Actually employees have to walk across the machines to get to their desks. Goes without saying that all these amenities are free of charge.

Facebook and Google serve three meals a day. At a different level, many companies have a kitchen where you can grab a soft drinks, coffee, snacks, etc. at any time. Gym, laundry and maid services are common benefits. Googleplex has even an outdoor swimming pool. It is easier to figure out after watching this video. Flexibility plays a key role. They believe innovation arises in relaxed atmospheres, with makes total sense in my opinion. Everybody dress casual and many use bikes (combined with Caltrain) to commute.

Leading companies dedicate huge amount of money to develop appealing environments in order to attract and hold talented people as employee turnover is very high here -18 months in average. By the way, this years it´s Facebook and not Google who was ranked #1 best place to work according to Glassdoor report.

What surprised me is the external look of these offices. I was expecting astonishing design building like Oracle HQ everywhere but they are quite ordinary. Actually Pinterest, Mozilla or Zynga offices in SF look like factories from outside. The magic is inside!

I said before HP is different. They were on top years ago but now Silicon Valley is driven by challenging companies. One photo is enough to illustrate how different is the workspace there.

Conociendo el entorno

Mi anterior post terminaba anunciando una próxima visita a San Francisco. Había quedado a cenar con @chinojack y aproveché para conocer la ciudad. Fue una primera toma de contacto pero, de momento, la impresión es muy positiva.

El tren te deja en la zona de South of Market, que está bastante cerca del Downtown. Desde allí me subí hasta Chinatown donde ves gente que, como dice el filósofo @pgh440, sólo comparte con los americanos el clima y la moneda.




No llegué hasta el Golden Gate pero sí que comprobé in situ las famosas cuestas y los no menos famosos tranvías, uno de los símbolos de la ciudad, que por cierto no funcionan con electricidad, sino enganchados a un cable que tira de ellos desde abajo.


Acabo crónica de la visita con una anécdota que me dejó un impresionado: estaba esperando en la cola para entrar al museo de arte moderno (SFMOMA, que la verdad es que no merece la pena visitar) y veo pasar a un chico joven que llevaba una mochila ¡e iba completamente desnudo!. No era el de esta foto porque no me dio tiempo de sacar el móvil y disparar, pero la imagen me recordaba mucho. Luego he visto que es una costumbre de allí que ahora quieren restringir.

El día siguiente (domingo) me tocó currar pero saqué un rato para ir dando un paseo hasta la sede de Google, que está a una media hora del apartamento. Los adjetivos se quedan cortos. Me había imaginado que era un edificio grande pero la verdad es que es una suma de edificios que ocupa un barrio entero. Le llaman Google Campus, pero le podían haber llamado Google City porque es más grande que muchos pueblos de España.

Para moverse entre los edificios tienen bicis de colores que dejan aparcadas en la puerta 



Hay otros edificios que transmiten buen rollo, como éste de Android.


Evidentemente no pude entrar pero espero tener la ocasión de asistir a alguna reunión allí y ver cómo son las oficinas por dentro. En fin, que seguro que no es oro todo lo que reluce, pero yo por si acaso me quedé un rato por allí para ver si se me pegaba algo...

Good morning Silicon Valley

Me alegro mucho de poder tener tiempo para retomar el blog que, por distintas razones, llevababa meses abandonado. Lo hago además desde California y, más concretamente, desde Mountain View en Silicon Valley, donde voy a estar un mes dando soporte legal en un proyecto que tenemos con Mozilla. Otro día hablaré más despacio del proyecto, que es apasionante.

Llegué el jueves por la tarde y creo que ya tengo el jet lag bajo control. Estoy viviendo en un apartamento pequeñito pero que está muy cerca de la oficina y puedo ir andando. De momento no he alquilado ningún coche, cosa que tiene maravillados a los americanos que no conciben moverse más de dos manzanas sin coger el coche.

Lo de ser el nuevo en la oficina es curioso después de tantos años trabajando. Somos unas 25 personas allí, de las cuales 4 venimos de España. Lo primero que te das cuenta es que la diferencia horaria con el resto del mundo condiciona mucho la manera de trabajar. Tenemos 9 horas menos que en España, así que aquí se magruga mucho para intentar tener unas horas en las que interactuar con Madrid o Londres. Los viernes son unos días peculiares porque cuando tú llegas a trabajar, en Europa es por la tarde y todo un mundo está pensando ya en el fin de semana, con lo cual son bastante tranquilos. Son lunes pasa lo contrario:-).

Mountain View es bastante pequeño. La calle principal es Castro St, en la que puedes encontrar casi cualquier tipo de restaurante (menos Burguer King y McDonald´s curiosamente). Está bien comunicado por tren y autopista con San Francisco, que está a unas 40 millas.

Mountain View es conocido porque aquí está la sede de Google pero también tienen oficinas entidades importantes como Linkedin, Microsoft o Mozilla. Creo que voy a tener reuniones con todos ellos así que otro día amplío la información.

Me voy a visitar San Francisco, de la que todo el mundo me ha hablado maravillas. En cualquier caso la crónica sigue en Twitter (@asdelcampo)