Wow, you nailed it. The culture was easily the #1 reason IMO that Google kept getting getting on top of the top places to work lists. No other company could do it such a that scale - transparency, freedom to work on stuff you like, free food, having TGIFs (or TGITs) where you can ask the CEO of one of the most powerful companies in history to his face why the company chose to do XYZ last week. And no one there really, truly actually appreciates the fact that the entire empire is built on digital ads. Yes it's known, but it's not appreciated. It's just kind of understood that the business org sells ads so the rest of the company can work on other things, almost none of which make money and are largely built to squeeze out competitors in a given space that they can't or won't acquire. It's no longer a place I'd ever want to work again and hasn't been for years.
There's a scale here for "evil" and it seems this discussion is sloppily equating all evil as the same.
But it's mostly subjective.
They also serve meat (including veal) in the cafes. Some find that pretty bad.
Are web ads evil? Some will say yes for the intrusion, or the interruption, or the compound effect of all the ads people see in they're lives. All valid reasons.
Is weapons research evil? Hurts people in new ways, also can deter violence and defend from bad guys.
But, can we say without hesitation that it's just as evil as helping ICE break up families, or helping Chinese censorship?
People joined Google knowing about the ads (and the meat) but didn't expect other stuff they're seeing now. And that's perfectly reasonable.
Few firms (any?) pass every possible "not evil test," so let's strengthen the quality of the debate here by avoiding logical sloppiness that would invalidate the important questions being discussed.
>Are web ads evil? Some will say yes for the intrusion, or the interruption, or the compound effect of all the ads people see in they're lives. All valid reasons.
It's entirely possible to run ads based on what might be of interest to someone reading that particular content without spying on users.
It's almost tautologically obvious that the more you know about someone, the more likely you can predict what might be of interest to them. If you don't believe me, try selling something with ads sometime. Even with all the tools Google and Facebook offer, it's hard.
There is no magic universe where you can get perfectly tailored ads along with perfect anonymity.
I don't think the comment you replied to was suggesting that privacy respecting ads would be "perfectly tailored". Targeting ads based on page content alone would be less profitable for adtech companies and possibly less effective but it's entirely possible to do and would raise fewer moral objections.
> There is no magic universe where you can get perfectly tailored ads along with perfect anonymity.
That's not what they said, and I don't think it's what they meant. Seems they meant to point out that one can run ads simply based on product rather than user: e.g., if I'm buying a hammer, it's reasonable to show me an ad for a box of nails. It won't be perfectly tailored to the individual, but that's not the point.
Not nonsense at all. Nobody claims that you can get "perfectly tailored ads along with perfect anonymity"; the claim is that one can get sufficiently tailored ads with almost perfect anonymity - by tailoring the ad to the content, not the user.
No, perfectly targeted advertising is actually very easy. You just place the ad in a topically appropriate place. Selling sports equipment? Put an ad on a site dedicated to that sport, problem solved. And zero tracking required.
>transparency, freedom to work on stuff you like, free food, having TGIFs (or TGITs) where you can ask the CEO of one of the most powerful companies in history to his face why the company chose to do XYZ last week.
Sure there's the elephant in the room but all that still sounds pretty good. Is it right to call that a lie?
