Average employees aren't in a position to speak accurately about antitrust matters anyway. If they misspeak, it will certainly be used against the company regardless of the actual merit.
No it would NOT. It is absolutely noteworthy if they do such a nefarious, un-american thing.
Banning speaking on behalf of their employer. Sure. Go nuts.
Banning speaking as a private citizen because you have an opinion you wish to express in public as a private citizen representing the opinions of yourself?!?
FFS!
Are you actually serious about that???
You can't push back against that hard enough. Surely? Freedom, opposition to totalitarianism. The right to speak your mind. Even if Google doesn't like your opinion and your opinion is objective wrong, to hell with them. Freedom.
Hmmm...
After Google interviewed a candidate for an executive job
last year, that person sent a follow-up email to Sundar
Pichai ... the candidate asked about the antitrust implications
of a potential merger.
An antitrust question to Mr. Pichai was seen as inappropriate,
raising questions about the candidate’s judgment.
Hopefully the candidate chose a better place.
Poor executive judgement in an organization that has something to hide.
Regular citizens definitely do know lots about that and represent a voice we need to hear. We should not at all be silent and leave that solely to attorneys or Congress - that’s what gets us into the problem where the laws are selectively enforced in exchange for political favoritism and regulatory capture.
The real problem though is that most people don't have this deep understanding, and what's worse, don't realize that they are really clueless. This is especially true with software engineers, who think they can understand everything. (About the only more arrogrant people are physicists at certain national labs who are sure they can design cluster file systems, since after all, it all resolves down to F=ma, and they know physics. :-)
The problem is that law and regulations make the x86 instruction architecture look regular, orthogonal, and logical. And having software engineers trying to draw legal conclusions --- applying the facts to the rules as they current stand --- is about as scary having lawyers designing a storage stack. (There are of course exceptions; I know of some lawyers who started out in computer science, and then went to law school, and there are also some computer programmers who have learned enough about law to understand how little they actually know, but at least know when to call in the specialists.)
But sure, we should know lots about public policy issues, and dive down deep enough so that each of us can understand the tradeoffs --- and in general, there are always tradeoffs to pretty much any public policy preference. Trying to make assertions without paying any attention to nuance will get you something like a certain US politician currently up for re-election. (And to be fair, the reason why the law has so many exceptions and irregularities is due to trying to work around the downsides of the obvious simple rules.)
I don't like that any more than you do. Corporations have far too much power in the US, and way more control over the lives of ordinary citizens than they should. But, there's nothing against the rules here. And, that's the way big corporations like it.
Note that Google employees are still free to donate money or otherwise assist organizations calling for Google to be broken up. While Google may not like this, it's highly unlikely they'll ever find out about it.
if you donated or is affiliated with _any_ political cause, and google fired you for that reason, then they've committed illegal discrimination against you.
However, this political affiliation/activism needs to be conducted outside working hours, lest it be associated with google's official public stance or incur liabilities. You actions as an employee could be misrepresented as the position of google, and they are well within their rights to restrict how you represent yourself during office hours, and they should also be allowed to prevent you from mis-representing yourself too (i.e., you cannot use your position as an employee to act as an agent of political activism or affiliation unless authorized by the owners of google).
I believe that's only the case in California and a handful of other states.
For instance: "Can an employer fire or discriminate against an employee based on political beliefs? You may be surprised to learn that, for many employees, the answer is yes." [0]
---
[0]: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-employers-discri...
A distinction without a difference, the intended effect is still the same: discouraging people from speaking out.
> I don't like that any more than you do. Corporations have far too much power in the US, and way more control over the lives of ordinary citizens than they should. But, there's nothing against the rules here.
Then surely the focus should be on changing the rules and pushing back what little we can, not making excuses about how it is technically not illegal.
What Google frowns upon, and will terminate an employee legally for, is speculation outside of that legally-protected space. So going to the SEC with evidence Google is acting bad? Legally protected. Circulating in an email "hey, is thing X that team Y is doing monopolistic?" No, and you'll get canned for having that discussion in an unprivileged environment without legal counsel present.
Well, TBH, "banning employees from using certain everyday terms because they have specific legal usages and the company can be sued for $$$ if the words were taken out of context" is one of the most American things I can think of.
The whole thing has been taken out of context here. It’s basically just “here’s how you avoid saying anything that can be taken out of context and used against us”.
It's funny how the people who adamantly oppose any restrictions on "freedom" don't realize "freedom" cuts both ways - if you have the unlimited freedom to do what you want then other people also have the unlimited freedom to punish you if they don't like what you are doing.
It will be reported as "google employee says <>". It _will_ be taken as a statement that is believed by "google employees".
And Google is free to fire them for doing so.
'Tis quite American sounding, to me.