The episode involving former Google employee James Damore and the Silicon Valley giant, raises some of the most important issues of this century. And you really should pay attention.
Alphabet, Google's parent holding company, is not just any business. Owner of the most valuable brand in the world next to Apple, the company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998 is practically monopolistic in the internet search market with almost 80% participation. Much of the group's billion-dollar revenue comes from digital advertising, a duopoly split with Facebook. Together, Google and Facebook own 50% of the market according to eMarketer consultancy.
Alphabet's best-known products and services such as Google Maps, YouTube, Chrome, Gmail, among others, have surpassed the mark of one billion users. Devices that use the Android operating system, according to Google, already surpass two billion active users. The holding company posted revenues of $ 26 billion in the last quarter, up 28% from the same period last year. Advertising revenue alone rose 18 percent compared to the second quarter of 2016. The European Commission recently convicted Google in an antitrust suit, giving a record fine of $ 9 billion. The conviction was celebrated by several shareholders for "low value."
The numbers impress but do not tell the whole story. Google is not only a business giant, it is also the largest symbol of the internet generation, provider of some of the most popular and essential services of information society, sponsor and enthusiast of a stripped-down lifestyle with colorful and "fun" offices, Full of cool nerds in a young, friendly environment as shown in the comedy "The Trainees" of 2013. Google has adopted the motto "Do not Be Bad" as a synthesis of their business practices, Theme that is confused with the company even after "retired."
A positive image of Google is crucial so that its unparalleled power does not generate nightmares and chills in public opinion. If a single company concentrates almost all of the digital information that exists, it knows virtually everything about the world that is part of the consumer market on the planet, you have to believe that the company is as impersonal and rational in its decisions as governments and public companies should be.
A company with access to an unimaginable amount of information about what almost every inhabitant of the planet is talking to via email, how he uses his cell phone, wherever he walks or what he searches on the internet, has to rely on the population's confidence that he makes decisions with criteria and always in the name of the best provision of service to the consumer. Google must necessarily be "not bad" in order to collect, store, process, sort, classify and use the universe of data it has on its servers and in the "cloud".
In recent days, the world has come to realize, more recently than ever, that the company of young geniuses who wear shabby, casual clothes, colorful walls and rooms filled with cushions and video games, almost indispensable "free" services which serve as the infrastructure for the digital life of all of us, is anything but a harmless, open and democratic corporation with purely technical motivations and "diversity" as one of its most fundamental values.
The Silicon Valley titans, who focus on the part that really interests the flow of information and technological innovation in the modern world, have been showing signs since the 1980s that they dated politics and embraced ideologies far more to the left than the average of Population. In the last election, 90 percent of campaign donations originating in the Valley went to the Democratic Party, a high rate even by California standards.
In 2012, Obama had no less than 84% of Silicon Valley's votes. Among Google employees, 97% of the donations went to the Democrat. Of Apple employees, 91% of the proceeds were donated to Donald Trump's predecessor. By 2016, 99% of all money raised among employees of the region's technology companies went to Hillary Clinton. The Democratic Party, which represents the American left, reigns alone among the nerds who send on the internet. The most emblematic exception is Peter Thiel, the mythical billionaire founder of PayPal and one of the investors from Facebook.
Eric Schimdt, Google CEO between 2001 and 2011, current chairman of Alphabet and owner of a fortune valued at $ 11 billion, is one of the most active members and donors of the Democratic Party. He has served as an aide to Barack Obama in both presidential campaigns, served on his government's board on technology issues and is considered a major influencer of the party on renewable energy issues.
Silicon Valley speaks of "diversity" but is the paradise of single thinking when the theme is political. And the dire consequences of the hegemonic and radical ideological option of the global internet center and specifically Google start to give the first signs. And they are not at all positive.
Google is the preferred target of far-left activists because of the composition of its staff. According to the company itself, 80% of its employees in the technology area are men. In leadership positions, 75%. They are common data in technology corporations, but as Google is particularly permeable to left-wing political pressures and tends to cheerfully accept the ideological patrol, has set up a series of domestic and publicity actions to show investors and the world how concerned it is with the Even though concerns are not yet significantly reflected in numbers.
In addition to male dominance among googlers, there is also a notable presence of 40% of Asians among their technology cadres versus 3% Hispanic and 1% black, which also does not match the average American population that is composed of 5 % Asian, 16% Hispanic, and 13% Black. For those who do not politicize private business decisions, it's okay for a company to choose who they want to hire or fire, but that's not how things work, especially in the increasingly problematic environment of Silicon Valley.
Asians often represent such a nuisance to the racialist leftist theses that are often ignored. If the cause of the "lack of diversity" in a corporation such as Google is from Western white Christian patriarchal heteronormative society, or any other kitschy cliché of the type, how to explain that 2 out of 5 employees in the technology area of the company come from Asia, a proportion ten times greater than the country's total average?
One of Google's most prominent figures: a member of a group of only 1 percent of its top performers, dared to try to open an honest conversation about "diversity" after attending a closed company event for employees. He has a solid academic background, a childhood chess champion and a master's degree in systemic biology from Harvard. The thanks received for the contribution was a dismissal with the right to public attacks of several executives of the group, which should yield in the future a good indemnification for him.
James Damore (pictured above) circulated a 10-page memo quoting research proving what anyone with a modicum of common sense knows: there are biological differences between men and women and these differences may explain, in part, why "Low" representation of women in technology positions. Damore made clear in her text that she is a diversity enthusiast and her intent with the paper was to seek more efficient and creative ways of engaging women in the area and not "perpetuate stereotypes," as she has been sadly said on the subject.
The young researcher did not make an ideological pamphlet but an academic paper that was to be taken seriously in an environment where diversity of thought was really a value and there was a disinterested, impersonal, depoliticized and honest search for truth. Canadian psychoanalyst Jordan Peterson, 55, who gained worldwide fame and won a legion of fans as he faced the ideological patrol of gender in his country recently, reviewed the document and attested its scientific quality.
By dismissing in a summarized and noisy manner one of his best employees, Google acted in a particularly authoritative and reprehensible way.
The services provided by Google are so important to the flow of information on the internet that there is already a movement to classify the company and its competitors as "public utility", as are classified as light, water, sewage, passenger transport, financial services, health plans, among others. The change entails the creation of specific and much more rigid regulatory legislation, with the participation of specific regulatory agencies.
No matter how antiliberal a new regulatory framework might appear for companies like Google or Facebook, it is undeniable that the abrupt disruption of service delivery or a radical ideology of their business decisions could have profound impacts on citizens' lives, as would happen With a politicized administration of companies of essential services and considered as of public utility.
No one will even acknowledge the possibility that Google will spoof their customers' Gmail accounts for political reasons, but the financial asphyxiation that YouTube has been promoting on conservative video channels does not do much to eliminate suspicion. The CEO of YouTube himself made harsh public statements against James Damore and his memo, giving a radically ideological interpretation of its content.
Google is not alone on this troubling path. Facebook is a constant target of denouncing its analyzes with left ideological bias on the content of posts and possible punishments to users and pages. Mark Zuckerberg's network, a billionaire with political aspirations and likely to run for president in the future, is also accused of classifying "fake news" news stories using political-ideological criteria.
Twitter, whose leftist bias is public and notorious, went so far as to censor a recent tweet by President Eric Trump's son, celebrating job creation numbers in the US economy. The tweet was deleted by the system because it would have "sensitive content". Sensitive to the American left, of course.
There needs to be an urgent, mature and balanced discussion on how to deal with the growing politicization of leading technology companies and who have control of much of the information circulating around the world. The left will call for nationalization or "social control," a euphemism for fascist intervention. More ideological liberals will say that "the market regulates" and will ask for fewer rules as a solution.
I am liberal in the economy and have a natural aversion to any kind of autocratic state regulation, but there are respectable arguments from those who ask for at least the recognition of these services as "public utility", which opens the possibility of being subject to rules as is already the case With companies of sectors also considered essential.
I will always prefer free competition and less regulation to attract new competitors to the market and challenge the leadership of companies that are doing a disservice to the consumer or society. Regardless of its position on how to keep the information society hostage from half a dozen increasingly ideological corporations, it is no longer possible to ignore the problem and postpone debate.