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Google, Apple Call Workers' Race & Gender Trade Secrets

theodp writes "The Mercury News reports that Google, whose stated mission is to make the world's information universally accessible, says the race and gender of its work force is a trade secret that cannot be released. So do Apple, Yahoo, Oracle, and Applied Materials. The five companies waged a successful 18-month FOIA battle with the Merc, convincing federal regulators who collect the data that its release would cause 'commercial harm' by potentially revealing the companies' business strategy to competitors. Law professor John Sims called the objections — the details of which the Dept. of Labor declined to share — 'absurd.' Many industry peers see the issue differently — Intel, Cisco, eBay, AMD, Sanmina, and Sun agreed to allow the DOL to provide the requested info. 'There's nothing to hide, in our view,' said a spokesman for Intel. Some observers note it's not the first time Google has declined to put a number on its vaunted diversity — in earlier Congressional testimony, Google's top HR exec dodged the question of how many African-American employees the company had."

6 of 554 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Trade Secret? by russotto · · Score: 3, Funny

    Does Google not want Microsoft to scoop them on their new blacksploitation search engine?

    Too late. If you search for "Shaft" in Google, the top result is the IMDB page for the 2000 remake, which no one wants to see. Bing brings up the wikipedia page for the 1971 original.

  2. breakdown by binarybum · · Score: 3, Funny

    they just don't want us to know that it's about 40%borg and 15%greys

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    ôó
  3. Re:I'm pretty sure by OakDragon · · Score: 5, Funny

    In Soviet Russia...

    Ha ha ha! Wait, that's not funny... Did you mean something like "In Soviet Russia, diversity tracks you!"?

  4. As for Apple... by doomy · · Score: 4, Funny

    We all knew given the naming of iPad, that they had no women in their marketing/strategic decision making (all that synergy stuff) dept.

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    ...free your source and the rest would follow...
  5. No Joke? by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 5, Funny

    More likely it'll prove this wasn't a joke.

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    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
  6. Re:I'm pretty sure by tomhudson · · Score: 4, Funny

    You might argue that computer geeks are a uniquely rational breed,

    This is slashdot. Thee is NO way anyone looking in here would think the "computer geeks" are uniquely rational, or that they breed ...