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They dropped that a while ago.

Nope. It's still in the Code of Conduct. See the final sentence.

https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html

And before anyone tries to say that isn't Google, it's their Alphabet subsidiary and its official website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... https://abc.xyz/

Mod parent and GP up.

Pedantic note: Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet, not the other way round.

https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html

And before anyone tries to say that isn't Google, it's their Alphabet subsidiary and its official website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... https://abc.xyz/

Mod parent and GP up.

Pedantic note: Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet, not the other way round.

And before anyone tries to say that isn't Google, it's their Alphabet subsidiary and its official website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... https://abc.xyz/

https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html

Looking at last Quarter's statement:
https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/2...

Alphabet paid ~$1.1B in taxes in Q1 (quarter of the year). It amounts to roughly ~11%. So while a fairly low rate, it's complete hyperbole to say they don't contribute *anything* to the Federal budget.

That doesn't take into account the payroll taxes, Medicare taxes and income taxes of their employees. Realistically, corporate taxes don't make sense. Tax the investors -- they can't move overseas.

As stated in that article, Google's parent company Alphabet did not take up the motto. People read far too much into the article. Google is still a company, and it is still their motto stated prominently in today's Google Code of Conduct.

Your reference starts off with the statement '"Don't be evil" is the motto of Google's corporate code of conduct. You've gotten confused by the media.

Google still exists as a subsidiary of Alphabet. Both have a "Code of Conduct" publicly published in their investor relations site.

Alphabet's Code of Conduct uses the phrase "do the right thing" in the lede. It is not in quotes to suggest that it should be their motto, but the media has written about it as such and, incorrectly, called it a change in Google's motto. Assuming it is a motto, it is Alphabet's motto.

Google is still an entity and still has its own Code of Conduct. The first sentence in that code of conduct is still “Don’t be evil.” It is also in quotes to suggest that it is a motto.

Your reference starts off with the statement '"Don't be evil" is the motto of Google's corporate code of conduct. You've gotten confused by the media.

Google still exists as a subsidiary of Alphabet. Both have a "Code of Conduct" publicly published in their investor relations site.

Alphabet's Code of Conduct uses the phrase "do the right thing" in the lede. It is not in quotes to suggest that it should be their motto, but the media has written about it as such and, incorrectly, called it a change in Google's motto. Assuming it is a motto, it is Alphabet's motto.

Google is still an entity and still has its own Code of Conduct. The first sentence in that code of conduct is still “Don’t be evil.” It is also in quotes to suggest that it is a motto.

I'm certain that we haven't heard the last of this dude's persecution complex.

By any chance, are you meaning that the guy's ideas are less founded than the VP of XYZ and Sundar's Ideas, without listening to them in completion? So if someone takes up a charged issue for debate, and he's in minority, instead of listening and then convincing him why he's wrong, should we sharpen our pitch forks and start the witch hunting game? And we expect that the thought of the world would change by this action (also called threatening someone)?

This makes no sense to me.

First off, Sundar Pichai was on holiday. Nobody should be expected to write a press release while on holiday. And nor did he; he wrote an internal memo which leaked. The "people of the world" as a whole were clearly not the intended audience, merely that subset who are already supposed to be aware of what the Code of Conduct says.

He's a CEO of the company and being paid millions, as compensation. Do you know why we call it compensation? Because of such discomforts borne by the people. When you are the CEO of a company, you are never on leave and regular privileges do not apply. You signed on the dotted line that you'd be 24x365 present for the company. If people feel that breaking their holiday is a non-negotiable thing for them, they are free to not take the responsibility of CEO. After all, it's a free world!

But when it comes to rewards and jobs, there should be only meritocracy.

Of course. Many younger programmers don't really understand what constitutes "merit" in this field, though. Engineering is the craft of solving human problems through the intelligent and appropriate application of science and technology. If you can't deal with the "human" part, this isn't the business for you.

And if you don't promote merit and don't let people choose freely of what they do, then it's autocratic and there will not be any new ideas. Also, you are not dealing with the "human" part of thinking out of the box. Why do you want everyone to think the same? Why not make them the better them instead!

By kicking Damore out of G, they have bolstered his hypothesis that other ideas are absolutely not welcome.

I'm certain that we haven't heard the last of this dude's persecution complex.

Sundar Pichai should have clarified on what points is the author wrong, and how. Given that the author's post had got out of company and is circulating in WWW, people of the world should know and get clear on what G's ideologies are, rather than just writing "He violated the code of conduct".

This makes no sense to me.

First off, Sundar Pichai was on holiday. Nobody should be expected to write a press release while on holiday. And nor did he; he wrote an internal memo which leaked. The "people of the world" as a whole were clearly not the intended audience, merely that subset who are already supposed to be aware of what the Code of Conduct says.

But when it comes to rewards and jobs, there should be only meritocracy.

Of course. Many younger programmers don't really understand what constitutes "merit" in this field, though. Engineering is the craft of solving human problems through the intelligent and appropriate application of science and technology. If you can't deal with the "human" part, this isn't the business for you.

Fines for companies found guilty of breaching EU antitrust rules can reach 10 percent of their global turnover

I hope I'm misreading something here (or the article author was..), but it sounds like Google could in theory be paying more in fines than they actually earned?

Doing some cross-checking it sounds like that $90b "turnover" is their pre-expense revenue. Their profit after expenses is more like $20b, from their own earnings report.

So a $9b fine is almost half of their entire global profits. In fact, according to this site, only around $8b of that profit was generated in the "EMEA" region (Europe, Middle East and Africa -- so that's still more than just the EU itself.)

When you're talking about having to pay out an entire year's profit, plus an additional billion dollars, plus however much cost for additional development needed to avoid future fines, you have to start wondering if its still worth operating in that region at all.

Because competition and capital expenditures are unique to this industry

Keep in mind that in every market where Google introduced competition, the incumbent monopoly immediately cut prices and improved services, indicating that they've had this capability for some time but did not need to exercise it without competition. Assuming they didn't just cut their CEO a massive bonus check every quarter, they likely have significant cash reserves to cover the expense of a protracted battle: AT&T ended 2015 with 5 Billion in cash and short term investments, up from 2014, Comcast ended 2015 with 2.4 Billion well down from 2014.

Sadly Alphabet is grouping Google Fiber with all of their "other bets" like Nest and that failed robotics project they dumped. "Other Bets" operating loss was 3.5 Billion dollars last year, but there's no way to know how much of that was Google Fiber.

Do you invest Billions of dollars in companies planning to lose it? Do you have some other explanation for why "this time it's different"?

Good thing you're not in finance

Good thing you are, then. Someone's gotta tell people not to ask what happens after the next quarterly report, those pump and dump scams don't pump themselves.

new garbage TLDs, including .xyz [...] Neither I, nor any of my users, appear to have gotten a legitimate email from any other these domains.

Let me guess: neither you nor your users owns any shares of Google's parent company Alphabet Inc., whose web site is https://abc.xyz/ .

Google, before it became an Alphabet soup of companies, was also a simplistic, if not more simplistic business. You type a word in a input box, and Google returns a result flavored by an advert. Problem isn't if the site has a simplistic business but if it has a useful function not done better or more conveniently elsewhere. Lots of things are getting automated, so maybe this is just another example of the jobless recovery we've been hearing much lately.

Was it familiar because Google is bringing its branding more in line with that of the Alphabet holding company that owns it?

No, their new website is https://abc.xyz/

Obviously those internet-type guys get the domain before announcing the product.

Who is "Susan"?
https://abc.xyz/

No...the new site is http://abc.xyz/ not Alphabet.com

The summary neglected to mention that the URL for Alphabet will be (and I'm not kidding) http://abc.xyz.

(Personally, I associate the .xyz domain with email spammers, but who am I to question their judgement?)