RE: https://mastodon.social/@Pettet8/116742131579090788
“Google was a different company 9 years ago.”
Hmm… was it, though? 🤔
https://ar.al/talks/#free-is-a-lie
#google #BigTech #peopleFarming #SiliconValley #surveillance #capitalism #meaCulpa
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@aral So was other Big Tech and the Worldwide web
An ex-Google employee who wishes to remain anonymous (“Google’s lawyers are extremely aggressive”) nevertheless said I could share this publicly:
“I managed there 9 years ago. It most certainly was not different in any meaningful way.
• During my orientation, a senior engineer, upon being asked if Google would ever open source its server design, replied “Open source is for the company in second place.”
• We merged Doubleclick cookies into people’s regular cookies the *instant* the consent decree expired.
• A major project when I left was how to work around Safari’s tracking protection.”
"Open source is for the company in second place" is the clearest possible statement of Google's actual values, and they said it out loud in orientation. Everything since has been consistent with it.
@prometheus Almost like they’re a factory farm for human beings or something.
@aral 9 years ago the mask was slipping. 15 years ago the mask was on. But the stories of serving profits and supporting a US imperialistic world order were always slipping out… they were just subtle enough about it that lots of people managed to delude themselves.
@aral
Google was founded with seed money from InQTel, the CIA's venture capital front. Google has always been evil
@aral less billions to run evil, is all
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