How Google spent 15 years creating a culture of concealment

The story is simple:

Google communication culture started as open and relaxed so people could go on a public internal forum and say their opinion "I think if we add x, y, z feature we can kill the competition". This is nothing specific to Google, it happens perhaps everywhere but Google wasn't policing it in written communication.

Then all these written opinions were gobbled up by lawyers during the discovery phase of endless lawsuits Google has to defend. It created constant headache so they said, we'll auto delete chats older than a few days unless you opt-out.

Now a court and this article say they are destroying evidence.

I've personally lost my trust in both the media and the legal system honestly. The incentives are just not aligned with good outcomes. The incentive for the media is more and more drama and the incentives for lawyers is always adversarial depending on who they represent.

You see Google as an innocent victim?

> Google communication culture started as open and relaxed so people could go on a public internal forum and say their opinion "I think if we add x, y, z feature we can kill the competition". This is nothing specific to Google, it happens perhaps everywhere but Google wasn't policing it in written communication.

What is specific to Google is that they have monopolies, and it's illegal to use that power to kill the competition. One solution is for a manager or executive to say, 'no, we can't do that' instead of promoting the idea.

There's precedent of this at many places.

One of the better-known instances, at least for Geeks Of a Certain Age, was "Bad Attitude", the unofficial group chat for Netscape, run personally by jwz. He'd written about the consequences of that being included within the scope of discovery by Microsoft lawyers during Netscape's actions against that company.

From 1998: <https://archive.is/1bYB6>

(Archive link to avoid jwz's treatment of HN referrer headers.)

I'm talking about an internal forum. people don't ask for their manager's permission or review before leaving a comment on an internal forum.