Edward Zitron, citing emails released as part of the Department of Justice's antitrust case against Google, writes about Prabhakar Raghavan: And Raghavan -- a manager, hired by Sundar Pichai, a former McKinsey man and a manager by trade -- is an example of everything wrong with the tech industry. Despite his history as a true computer scientist with actual academic credentials, Raghavan chose to bulldoze actual workers and replace them with toadies that would make Google more profitable and less useful to the world at large. Since Prabhakar took the reins in 2020, Google Search has dramatically declined, with the numerous "core" search updates allegedly made to improve the quality of results having an adverse effect, increasing the prevalence of spammy, search engine optimized content. It's because the people running the tech industry are no longer those that built it. Larry Page and Sergey Brin left Google in December 2019 (the same year as the Code Yellow fiasco), and while they remain as controlling shareholders, they clearly don't give a shit about what "Google" means anymore. Prabhakar Raghavan is a manager, and his career, from what I can tell, is mostly made up of "did some stuff at IBM, failed to make Yahoo anything of note, and fucked up Google so badly that every news outlet has run a story about how bad it is." This is the result of taking technology out of the hands of real builders and handing it to managers at a time when "management" is synonymous with "staying as far away from actual work as possible." And when you're a do-nothing looking to profit as much as possible, you only care about growth. You're not a user, you're a parasite, and it's these parasites that have dominated and are draining the tech industry of its value. Raghavan's story is unique, insofar as the damage he's managed to inflict (or, if we're being exceptionally charitable, failed to avoid in the case of Yahoo) on two industry-defining companies, and the fact that he did it without being a CEO or founder. Perhaps more remarkable, he's achieved this while maintaining a certain degree of anonymity. Everyone knows who Musk and Zuckerberg are, but Raghavan's known only in his corner of the Internet. Or at least he was. Now Raghavan has told those working on search that their "new operating reality" is one with less resources and less time to deliver things. Rot Master Raghavan is here to squeeze as much as he can from the corpse of a product he beat to death with his bare hands. Raghavan is a hall-of-fame rot economist, and one of the many managerial types that have caused immeasurable damage to the Internet in the name of growth and "shareholder value." And I believe these uber-managers - these ultra-pencil-pushers and growth-hounds - are the forces destroying tech's ability to innovate.

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Google has fired another 20 workers for participating in protests against its $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government, according to an activist group representing the workers. From a report: In total, the company has now fired around 50 employees over sit-in protests held in Google offices last week that were part of yearslong discontent among a group of Google and Amazon workers over claims that Israel is using the companies' services to harm Palestinians. Google has denied those claims, saying Project Nimbus, the cloud-computing contract, doesn't involve "highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services," and that Israeli government ministries that use its commercial cloud must agree to its terms of services and other policies. No Tech For Apartheid, the group representing the workers, claimed in a statement that Google is attempting to "quash dissent, silence its workers, and reassert its power over them." "That's because Google values its profit, and its $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and military, more than people. And it certainly values it over its own workers," it said. The group said it will continue organizing until Google cancels Project Nimbus. Further reading: Google To Employees: 'We Are a Workplace'.

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Google, once known for its unconventional approach to business, has taken a decisive step towards becoming a more traditional company by firing 28 employees who participated in protests against a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government. The move comes after sit-in demonstrations on Tuesday at Google offices in Silicon Valley and New York City, where employees opposed the company's support for Project Nimbus, a cloud computing contract they argue harms Palestinians in Gaza. Nine employees were arrested during the protests. In a note to employees, CEO Sundar Pichai said, "We have a culture of vibrant, open discussion... But ultimately we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear: this is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics." Google also says that the Project Nimbus contract is "not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services." Axios adds: Google prided itself from its early days on creating a university-like atmosphere for the elite engineers it hired. Dissent was encouraged in the belief that open discourse fostered innovation. "A lot of Google is organized around the fact that people still think they're in college when they work here," then-CEO Eric Schmidt told "In the Plex" author Steven Levy in the 2000s. What worked for an organization with a few thousand employees is harder to maintain among nearly 200,000 workers. Generational shifts in political and social expectations also mean that Google's leadership and its rank-and-file aren't always aligned.

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced substantial internal reorganizations on Thursday, including the creation of a new team called "Platforms and Devices" that will oversee all of Google's Pixel products, all of Android, Chrome, ChromeOS, Photos, and more. From a report: The team will be run by Rick Osterloh, who was previously the SVP of devices and services, overseeing all of Google's hardware efforts. Hiroshi Lockheimer, the longtime head of Android, Chrome, and ChromeOS, will be taking on other projects inside of Google and Alphabet. This is a huge change for Google, and it likely won't be the last one. There's only one reason for all of it, Osterloh says: AI. "This is not a secret, right?" he says. Consolidating teams "helps us to be able to do full-stack innovation when that's necessary," Osterloh says. He uses the example of the Pixel camera: "You had to have deep knowledge of the hardware systems, from the sensors to the ISPs, to all layers of the software stack. And, at the time, all the early HDR and ML models that were doing camera processing... and I think that hardware / software / AI integration really showed how AI could totally transform a user experience. That was important. And it's even more true today."

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Google said on Thursday it had terminated 28 employees after some staff participated in protests against the company's cloud contract with the Israeli government. From a report: The Alphabet unit said a small number of protesting employees entered and disrupted work at a few unspecified office locations. "Physically impeding other employees' work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior," the company said in a statement. Google said it had concluded individual investigations, resulting in the termination of 28 employees, and would continue to investigate and take action as needed. In a statement on Medium, Google workers affiliated with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign called it a "flagrant act of retaliation" and said that some employees who did not directly participate in Tuesday's protests were also among those Google fired.

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CNBC reports that nine Google workers were arrested on trespassing charges Tuesday night in protest of the company's $1.2 billion contract providing cloud computing services to the Israeli government. The sit-in happened at Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian's office in Sunnyvale and the 10th floor commons of Google's New York office. From the report: The arrests, which were livestreamed on Twitch by participants, follow rallies outside Google offices in New York, Sunnyvale and Seattle, which attracted hundreds of attendees, according to workers involved. [...] Protesters in Sunnyvale sat in Kurian's office for more than nine hours until their arrests, writing demands on Kurian's whiteboard and wearing shirts that read "Googler against genocide." In New York, protesters sat in a three-floor common space. Five workers from Sunnyvale and four from New York were arrested. "On a personal level, I am opposed to Google taking any military contracts -- no matter which government they're with or what exactly the contract is about," Cheyne Anderson, a Google Cloud software engineer based in Washington, told CNBC. "And I hold that opinion because Google is an international company and no matter which military it's with, there are always going to be people on the receiving end... represented in Google's employee base and also our user base." Anderson had flown to Sunnyvale for the protest in Kurian's office and was one of the workers arrested Tuesday. "Google Cloud supports numerous governments around the world in countries where we operate, including the Israeli government, with our generally available cloud computing services," a Google spokesperson told CNBC, adding, "This work is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Dozens of Google employees began occupying company offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California, on Tuesday in protest of the company's $1.2 billion contract providing cloud computing services to the Israeli government. The sit-in, organized by the activist group No Tech for Apartheid, is happening at Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian's office in Sunnyvale and the 10th floor commons of Google's New York office. The sit-in will be accompanied by outdoor protests at Google offices in New York, Sunnyvale, San Francisco, and Seattle beginning at 2 pm ET and 11 am PT. Tuesday's actions mark an escalation in a series of recent protests organized by tech workers who oppose their employer's relationship with the Israeli government, especially in light of Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza. Since Hamas killed about 1,100 Israelis on October 7, the IDF has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians. Just over a dozen people gathered outside Google's offices in New York and Sunnyvale on Tuesday. Among those in New York was Google cloud software engineer Eddie Hatfield, who was fired days after disrupting Google Israel's managing director at March's Mind The Tech, a company-sponsored conference focused on the Israeli tech industry, in early March. Several hours into the sit-ins on Tuesday, Google security began to accuse the workers of "trespassing" and disrupting work, prompting several people to leave while others vowed to remain until they were forced out. The 2021 contract, known as Project Nimbus, involves Google and Amazon jointly providing cloud computing infrastructure and services across branches of the Israeli government. Last week, Time reported that Google's work on Project Nimbus involves providing direct services to the Israel Defense Forces. [...] On March 4, more than600 other Googlers signed a petition opposing the company's sponsorship of the conference. After Hatfield was fired three days later, Google trust-and-safety-policy employee Vidana Abdel Khalek resigned from her position in opposition to Project Nimbus. Then, in late March, more than 300 Apple workers signed an open letter that alleged retaliation against workers who have expressed support for Palestinians, and urged company leadership to show public support for Palestinians. Hasan Ibraheem, a Google software engineer, is participating in the sit-in at his local Google office in New York. "This has really been a culmination of our efforts," he tells WIRED. Since joining No Tech for Apartheid in December, Ibraheem says, he has been participating in weekly "tabling" actions being held at Google office cafes in New York, Sunnyvale, San Francisco, and Mountain View, California. It involves holding a sign that says "Ask me about Project Nimbus" during lunch break, passing out flyers, and answering questions from coworkers. "It's actually shocking how many people at Google don't even know that this contract exists," Ibraheem says. "A lot of people who don't know about it, who then learn about it through us, are reasonably upset that this contract exists. They just didn't know that it existed beforehand."

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La merdification de YouTube continue : Après la guerre aux bloqueurs de publicité, Google s'attaques aux applications tierces (FreeTube, NewPipe, etc.) en bloquant la lecture de la vidéo ou en dégradant le débit.
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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google says it will start removing links to California news websites in a "short term test for a small percentage of California users." The move is in response to the pending California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), which would require Google to pay a fee for linking Californians to news articles. "If passed, CJPA may result in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers," Jaffer Zaidi, Google VP of global news partnerships, wrote in a blog post announcing the decision. "The testing process involves removing links to California news websites, potentially covered by CJPA, to measure the impact of the legislation on our product experience." Zaidi adds that Google will also pause "further investments in the California news ecosystem," referring to initiatives like Google News Showcase, product and licensing programs for news organizations, and the Google News Initiative. A study (PDF) conducted in 2023 estimates that Google would owe U.S. publishers around $10 to 12 billion annually if the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, a national bill, is passed.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: If you're -- apparently, one of the few people -- using the VPN service that comes with Google One, we've got bad news for you. In an email you're going to receive from Google if you haven't gotten it yet, it revealed that it's phasing out the perk sometime later this year. The company rolled out Google One's VPN feature back in 2020, but you could only access it then if you're paying for a plan with at least 2TB of storage, which costs at least $10 a month. Last year, the company expanded its availability across all One plans, including the basic $2-per-month option, making it more affordable than before.

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Google Cloud on Tuesday joined AWS and Azure in announcing its first custom-built Arm processor, dubbed Axion. From a report: Based on Arm's Neoverse 2 designs, Google says its Axion instances offer 30% better performance than other Arm-based instances from competitors like AWS and Microsoft and up to 50% better performance and 60% better energy efficiency than comparable X86-based instances. [...] "Technical documentation, including benchmarking and architecture details, will be available later this year," Google spokesperson Amanda Lam said. Maybe the chips aren't even ready yet? After all, it took Google a while to announce Arm-chips in the cloud, especially considering that Google has long built its in-house TPU AI chips and, more recently, custom Arm-based mobile chips for its Pixel phones. AWS launched its Graviton chips back in 2018.

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For decades, work has revolved around documents, spreadsheets, and slide decks. Word, Excel, PowerPoint; Pages, Numbers, Keynote; Docs, Sheets, Slides. Now Google is proposing to add another to that triumvirate: an app called Vids that aims to help companies and consumers make collaborative, shareable video more easily than ever. From a report: Google Vids is very much not an app for making beautiful movies... or even not-that-beautiful movies. It's meant more for the sorts of things people do at work: make a pitch, update the team, explain a complicated concept. The main goal is to make everything as easy as possible, says Kristina Behr, Google's VP of product management for the Workspace collaboration apps. "The ethos that we have is, if you can make a slide, you can make a video in Vids," she says. "No video production is required." Based on what I've seen of Vids so far, it appears to be roughly what you'd get if you transformed Google Slides into a video app. You collect assets from Drive and elsewhere and assemble them in order -- but unlike the column of slides in the Slides sidebar, you're putting together a left-to-right timeline for a video. Then, you can add voiceover or film yourself and edit it all into a finished video. A lot of those finished videos, I suspect, will look like recorded PowerPoint presentations or Meet calls or those now-ubiquitous training videos where a person talks to you from a small circle in the bottom corner while graphics play on the screen. There will be lots of clip art-heavy product promos, I'm sure. But in theory, you can make almost anything in Vids. ou can either do all this by yourself or prompt Google's Gemini AI to make a first draft of the video for you. Gemini can build a storyboard; it can write a script; it can read your script aloud with text-to-speech; it can create images for you to use in the video. The app has a library of stock video and audio that users can add to their own Vids, too.

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