Google’s General Counsel Kent Walker said June 27 that “we respectfully disagree” with the European Commission’s decision to fine the company €2.4 billion that day.
Clearly not all of Google’s 60,000 employees feel the same way.
“F–king looters,” raged one Google employee a day later on Blind, an app used by Silicon Valley tech employees to banter about their work, wages and bosses. U.S. President Donald “Trump should do something about this. Start fining German companies as retaliation,” another Google employee said.
Screenshots of the conversations, which do not represent companies’ official views, from the end of June were shared with POLITICO, which independently verified them. Only employees of a select group of tech companies can join Blind. Their names are hidden by the app, although their company’s identity — verified by Blind, which requires a user to register via his or her corporate email address — is not.
A spokesperson for Google declined to comment.
On the Apple App Store, Blind describes itself as “the most exclusive, anonymous community app for tech professionals [with] over 25,000 Microsoft, 4,000 Uber, 12,000 Amazon employees and more from Google, Facebook, Airbnb…”
Employees use Blind to discuss all sorts of things. One thread explores employees’ sexual orientation and activity. One Amazon employee replied (on December 31) that he has tried salsa to meet girls but “dint work.” Try rowing instead, suggested one Microsoft employee. Another Microsoft employee said he is 70 and bragged about enjoying “1 Golden Shower” this year, before announcing he is “bi-curious about Trudeau and Macron.”
The main thread on the EU verdict against Google generated 126 comments, far fewer than other threads on diversity, salaries or dating tips. An employee from software firm Atlassian kicked off the thread on Google’s antitrust sanction on June 27.
“Are you angry, bro?”asked one Microsoft employee to a Googler, oozing Schadenfreude.
“American companies break laws and cheat with monopolistic practices. EU protects [consumers] and retaliates!” another Microsoft employee posted.
“Google is Microsoft 2.0 … Good job,” another said. “Welcome Google to the exclusive antitrust club!”
That was too rich for one Googler to bear: “Seriously? The bar was set very low here, Microsoft is just as ‘guilty’ if you look at pushing bing, one drive, etc. with their desktop dominance.” Bing is Microsoft’s search engine, which computes about 6 percent of searches in the United States to Google’s 88 percent and around 4 percent in Europe to Google’s 91 percent, according to StatCounter. OneDrive is the company’s file-hosting service. Microsoft said last week it was settling an antitrust dispute filed by Kaspersky Lab. Microsoft and Google announced in April 2016 they were settling all outstanding antitrust disputes, including a Microsoft complaint before EU regulators.
A spokesperson for Microsoft declined to comment.
A discussion also broke out between Google employees, after one defended the EU ruling: “We are the de facto monopoly in search. people essentially only find other websites through us and now we killed many such sites by pushing them off the first page in favor of our service.”
“And?” another Googler shot back, citing Bing as an alternative for search and Yelp as an alternative when looking for restaurants. “Wise Europeans can pick and choose who they think should be winners. There is no proof of harm to consumers.”
To which the other Googler responded: “The EU is not capitalist, so different rules apply.”
“EU is a communist shithole,” one Amazon employee replied. (The comment got 50 likes, the second most-liked of any other of those POLITICO viewed.)
“Let’s have a war!! WW3,” someone from Yahoo wrote back.
UPDATE: This story has been updated to clarify that Microsoft and Google announced in April 2016 they were settling all outstanding antitrust disputes.