The content of your response is so divergent than what I have heard from people working at Google that I interact with, both personally and professionally, that I find it difficult to believe you actually spent a significant amount of time (if any) at Google.
1. I've never heard anyone say or imply that technology is universally good. I've heard people talk about how making information readily available and accessible to all is good (though people disagree on how universally to apply it).
2. As far as centralization, from the things I've heard it seems that centralization is considered bad. Everything needs to be distributed, standardized, and redundant. Yes, they seem to like to keep things organized, but apparently they'd rather do it in a heterogeneously distributed manner (like each user request creates many internal requests to different functions and then the result is stitched together).
3. "Don't be evil" seems to be interpreted in the "Don't do evil things" sense instead of "Don't be motivated by evil".
4. I would say a "data-driven system" makes the best decision is the closest I could find to your assumption, and I would tend to agree with them.
5. I've never heard of anything like that. I have heard people mention things that Google could do but doesn't since it is considered not good -- an example of this is that there seems to be high level opposition to using browser fingerprinting for getting around browser cookie blocking for advertising (despite already having developed state of the art techniques that are used in anti-abuse).
6. This might be the closest assumption you have, actually, since it depends on your definition of manipulation. If you ask me if fire is hot and I teach you that fire is dangerously hot (and maybe also provide some example sets of protective items and clothing you could use to work with fire to mitigate the danger), I have likely manipulated you into not getting burned later. So sorry that I'm so manipulative ;)
For point 2, I think they mean in terms of product and not code, ie. "Google should create a centralized social platform (G+)" vs "Google should create a federated social platform or contribute to existing federated platforms (Mastodon)".
> 2. As far as centralization, from the things I've heard it seems that centralization is considered bad. Everything needs to be distributed, standardized, and redundant.
I feel like this has to be a willful misunderstanding of the parent comment. Why would the comment above you, in talking about Google's moral vision and action, be referring to the actual architecture of servers and code? Clearly they are talking about "centralizing" as in "if we can gather all the information together, and all our services can share information, then...."
Not gonna get between you two, it could also be that you are a Googler and are thus inside the reality distortion bubble. Or maybe merely a SV resident. It's gonna twist your perception in ways you cannot even see until you're outside of that lens. Google has a tendency to take over people's lives. Googlers so often have only other Googlers as friends, eat 2 or even 3 meals a day there, the company is overly concerned with your well-being and work-life balance, etc. Part of your underlying point seems to be that since Google is made up of seemingly nice and well-meaning people that it couldn't possibly be a horrible thing. I'd argue that it is instead the configuration of people and its incentives that can turn something truly horrible. (something like the infamous prisoner experiment, but milder: Google essentially presents an internal narrative about its own virtuosity and need to scale and swallow the world) And I'd agree with the OP that the senior leadership is mostly concerned with scaling either their own fortunes or the company's bottom line.
1. Sure they don't say that out loud. It's just an assumption baked so deeply into the mindset that no one even considers it a thing worth openly stating or questioning. And others might quibble about making information universally accessible being wonderful. A lot of information is misinformed propaganda. Look at flat earth videos.
2. You are talking about decentralization (and replication) as a means of implementing robustness. You fundamentally misunderstood what this person was saying.
5. There are a massive number of free market libertarian types when it comes to economics, especially among the upper management.
Someone else pointed out that none of these assumptions are all that damning. I agree, they aren't. And I agree that the OP missed that Google's fundamental sin was its decision to be, at its core, an ad company. Googlers definitely don't understand that, either.
>The content of your response is so divergent than what I have heard from people working at Google
Fair enough, but what do you hear from people who don't work at google?
I assume a lot don't care about tracking and the few that do.. though luck? Get used to it?
It's being sold to us as personalized advertising and somehow we're being told that everyone wants it. Is it really that strange for someone to say that they don't want it?
1. I've never heard anyone say or imply that technology is universally good. I've heard people talk about how making information readily available and accessible to all is good (though people disagree on how universally to apply it).
2. As far as centralization, from the things I've heard it seems that centralization is considered bad. Everything needs to be distributed, standardized, and redundant. Yes, they seem to like to keep things organized, but apparently they'd rather do it in a heterogeneously distributed manner (like each user request creates many internal requests to different functions and then the result is stitched together).
3. "Don't be evil" seems to be interpreted in the "Don't do evil things" sense instead of "Don't be motivated by evil".
4. I would say a "data-driven system" makes the best decision is the closest I could find to your assumption, and I would tend to agree with them.
5. I've never heard of anything like that. I have heard people mention things that Google could do but doesn't since it is considered not good -- an example of this is that there seems to be high level opposition to using browser fingerprinting for getting around browser cookie blocking for advertising (despite already having developed state of the art techniques that are used in anti-abuse).
6. This might be the closest assumption you have, actually, since it depends on your definition of manipulation. If you ask me if fire is hot and I teach you that fire is dangerously hot (and maybe also provide some example sets of protective items and clothing you could use to work with fire to mitigate the danger), I have likely manipulated you into not getting burned later. So sorry that I'm so manipulative ;)