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Google Co-Opts Whale-Watching Boat To Ferry Employees
theodp writes "Purportedly intended to defuse tensions over gentrification that have led to blockades and vandalism of Google's ubiquitous shuttles (video), which make use of public San Francisco bus stops (map), Wired reports that Google is now chartering a ferry to take its workers from SF to Silicon Valley. 'We certainly don't want to cause any inconvenience to SF residents, and we're trying alternative ways to get Googlers to work,' Google explained. Inconveniencing whale-seeking visitors to The Aquarium of the Pacific, however, is apparently not considered evil. After learning that Google had co-opted the $4 million, 83-foot, 150-passenger whale-watching catamaran MV/Triumphant to ferry as few as 30-40 Googlers to work, some expressed concerns on Facebook that Google would be The Grinch That Stole Whale Watching Season (not to worry; the boat's slated to make its 'triumphant' return to Long Beach after Google's '30-day trial')."
People in the traffic jams are now able to watch whales getting brought to work by boat.
theodp, do you have any source whatsoever to actually back up your assertion that the use of the boat is intended to defuse tension?
And since when is "inconveniencing" tourists by chartering just ONE of the boats "in the fleet" considered evil, as you imply?
So instead of peacefully letting the tech workers board somewhat environmentally friendly busses that are subjected to stringent emissions regulations, they harass google and others to the point where they have to ride a boat with NO emissions regulations to and from work? Not to mention the fuel economy of boat vs wheels is horrible.
I wonder how the whales feel about this?
"The wisdom of the Patriarchs was that they *knew* they were fools." --Master Foo
> Inconveniencing [whale watchers] is apparently not considered evil.
I don't understand what anyone involved in this debacle wants google to do. Cease to exist? Develop transporter technology? In general, complaints about gentrification seem ridiculous. You can't complain about rich people outbidding you for your home any more than you can about immigrants stealing your jobs. What do you want, an act of congress to protect your economic niche? Hope you have a lobby.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
I really dont get it. While I understand google is not squeeky clean these days, why do people have to turn everything into an anti google issue? Google pays for busses to bring its employees to work? its bad!!!! Google tries something different with a ferry, OH NO now people cant watch the whales!!!! I mean come on already google could say they are going to give everyone in the state a brand new tesla, and someone would be bitching about how they wanted a ford
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
If the ferry was chartered, how exactly is that "co-opt"ing? Sounds a bit more like a free market exercise. If whale watching is a good enough business, somebody can provide more ferrys to handle both money providing opportunities.
It sounds like Google didnt' co-opt the boat, they just hired it. The company that owns it and hires it out decided to take Google's offer over that of the whale-watching company who apparently didn't have a long-term contract for it's use. That's frankly one of the risks you take when you make your company's operation dependent on someone else without locking it down with an iron-clad air-tight contract: that someone else may change their mind and you're left high and dry.
I don't think "co-opted" means what you think it means. I'm pretty sure Google just paid the operator for their service.
One day, Google is just going to build a space station and all of their workers will be up there. Then other companies will follow suit.
Eventually, all that will be left on the hot drought stricken planet will be the unemployable dregs with no skills and no worthwhile education - you know, all those losers that companies say have no skills or inadequate education. And the folks who don't fit into the corporate culture *cough*too old*cough*.
Then in the meantime, when those losers complain about job prostpects, the elite will point fingers and say "Oh Gee! First World Problems!" and other BS - while they continually lobby for more of the folks from countries exporting their poverty.
And I'd like to point out that yes, I do have First World problems. See, my ancestors were smart enough to treat their women as equals and not less than cattle. They were smart enough to implelment a democratically elected governmental system and not fall for the liars who want to create an authortarian control government and economy. And they were smart enough to realize that a government needs to be secular in order to be just.
So, I got lucky - I had wise ancestors who learned from the stupidity of the rest of the World. And I am grateful.
I resent the billionaire class trying to hide their true intentions by calling smart, hard working, decent people inadequate in order to hide their exploitation of Third World labor - like the Indians, Chinese, and other countries who didn't have the benefit of enlighted leaders and ancestors.
What is so bad about the employees driving themselves to work, or use public transportation, or have Google buy bus tickets for employees to commute by bus?
OH! It's got'a be that CARBON TAX TRADING thang that Gov Moonbeam instituted to shore-up his 100M retirement portfolio cash base!
Oh dear FSM, this is so fucking stupid. I can't believe people take the time to get outraged over google paying money to lease a boat of all things.
I think the anger is misplaced in the first place but this doesn't actually address what I see as the actual gripe.
The reason people are mad a Google buses is because it enables and encourages Google employees to live in SF without paying expensive transportation costs or suffering the inconveniences of public transportation, which makes a two tiered system of those who work for a deep pocket tech companies and those who don't.
It causes an increase in demand for housing which SF building laws do little to meet on the supply side substantially raising rents.
Work for Google, be a total brogrammer, live in hip Disneyland for adults, work in a tech-burbia perpetual college bubble, at the cost of displacing less affluent locals and the destruction of culture.
Every one would be singing its praise.
Hasn't whale watching been vilified by the tree huggers?
How is the word vandalism racist?
I hadn't realized that the Vandals objected.
Don't be lazy, people. Use your own car, public bus, carpool with others, whatever.
What's the difference between what Google is doing and carpooling on a large scale?
Then Shut The Fuck Up. It's not your boat, you have no legal or moral interest in what the owner of the boat uses it for, and if Google pays him more money than tourists, more power too him.
Why is this even an issue? How do the wants of rich eco-tourists trump private property rights?
Against the middle ages Germanic tribe, perhaps?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Seriously will ./ try to slant anything to make Google look bad? Co-Opt a boat? Did Google storm the boat by force and take it over like nerdy pirates? Or did Google negotiate a contract with a company to use one of their boats? If whale watching is in such crazy demand that Google using a boat for 30 days is ruining the season then it sounds like there is a great business opportunity for someone to start another whale watching tour company.
./'s pantys in a knot. Thats why.
Why isn't anyone bitching about the owners of the boat letting Google use it? Becuase that wouldn't get
I would guess that moving 30-40 passengers via bus uses far less fuel than taking them by boat.
Way to go SF! Save your bus-stops...
We should expect pro-environment Berkley folks to be protesting the pro-bus-stop SF residents...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandals
The police need to move in swinging batons next time idiots stop their bus.
Because it creates a divide. Carpooling is people (workers) sharing resources THEY pay for.
It's prejudicial against 5th century Germanic tribes. If anyone finds a Vandal to complain, I'll back them 100%.
But the boats can't hog the left lane and impede other boaters from going with the flow of traffic.
Develop transporter technology?
Proposal accepted.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If nothing else, the Google shuttle could be considered simply a form of non-monetary compensation to Google's employees. (In the same way that all their free food is actually taxed as income.)
That's the way an economy works. They might not be paying cash for it, but at the end of the day they're making less money because some of their compensation is in the form of a free bus ride down the Peninsula.
I think the issue is that Google is using city bus stops without permission. In other words appropriating a public asset for private use. And possibly impacting the performance of a city service, have city buses had to wait while the google shuttle cleared the stop?
If Google were picking up its employees somewhere else there would probably be no controversy.
Personally, I don't like Visigoths. Tomorrow, I'll put up a sign: "No spiders or Visigoths allowed." I'm sick and tired of these Visigoths.
(no sig)
At the end of the day what I take from this is that SF is populated with frightened, hate-filled malcontents. I just hope this serves to dispel the rose-colored view of these people that so many indulge. They are not fair, friendly, open armed flower children that wish you and yours peace and freedom; they hate you and if you have the temerity to intrude on their precisely cultivated little world they won't hesitate to publically ostracize you, or worse.
One wonders if, at this point, someone in Google isn't thinking a suite in Colorado or Utah might have been a better option. I'm certain thats occurred to the employees that have to run the SF protest gauntlet every day.
Is there anything out that that is not racist to a subgroup of people these days? I mean seriously I would turn it into a drinking game but I would be dead within 15 minutes of watching the news these days
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
They did not. THE Vandals objected.
Time to put together that U-boat Kickstarter project.
From this summary: "...some expressed concerns on Facebook..."
From another summary today: "Google today announced new integration between Gmail and Google+..."
Oh this irony!
The boat doesn't belong to the Aquarium of the Pacific; it belongs to a private harbor cruise company. If the cruise company would rather charter the boat to Google than run whale-watching tours, why shouldn't they do so?
As to the buses -- it seems that the excuse a lot of opponents use is that Google and other companies use the city's bus stops without paying for the privilege, either through fees or through fines. But the mayor of San Francisco doesn't seem to have any issues with this. Muni is actually working on developing a policy to more efficiently share the stops with the private shuttles, and it's not going to get a dime for doing it.
When a tiny emerging detail with "Google" attached turns into a preposterous loaded incitement to hate like this snippet, Google has one more reason to be extremely secretive. It's not just that "discussion isn't in their interest." It's obvious to sane people inside and outside Google that the discussion isn't fair, useful, or productive, and they're left with a choice between being secretive and offering themselves as a punching bag for lunatics. You, sir, OP, make it significantly harder for critics to influence Google.
So really, the problem is that the employees who use these carpools are paying too little for them, while the rest of Google employees are unfairly shafted?
I'm surprised Google is bothering with a boat. The boat only takes people as far as Redwood City. They've only doing a little more than half the trip by boat. They'll have to take buses at both ends. It doesn't seem worth the trouble to change vehicles twice.
People aren't upset at the car/van/bus-pooling per se.
They're upset about the gentrification of neighborhoods, as tech millionaires "ruin" old neighborhoods by living in them.
As an example, look how "awful" Brooklyn is now. Damned hipsters and their mayonnaise store.
I rode on a ferry once. I was heading to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe. So, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. 'Give me five bees for a quarter', you'd say. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah...the important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war; the only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
What? How is "vandalism" a racist word? Some vandalism is racist (as in when a synagogue is defaced with swastikas), but I've never before seen someone claim that the word is somehow racist. Are you concerned with offending the descendants of a Germanic tribe that overran parts of Europe in the 5th century?
If I were Google, I'd be encouraging people to relocate to Austin, a fine city which is the Live Music Capital of the World, and not particularly encumbered by artificial housing constraints. They can even go whale watching on Lake Travis, although they probably won't see any.
Or they could ramp up their facility near here in Cambridge and rent the duck boats to take engineers over to Boston.
...after Google's '30-day trial'...
Good grief. Even their boat chartering is in beta.
Proverbs 21:19
Or is that too sensible?
in the northern half of the bay area... the boat is a good idea to get those google fucks off the interstates on their hour+ commute to and from work, so long as any necessary permits and licenses for the chartered passenger ferry are paid for and any public docks they might use get a fair dock fee per landing and/or per passenger. and the busses? gtfo, google. you shouldn't be allowed to use PUBLIC BUS stops, ya know.. where only public busses are allowed to stop or park. buy up a few parking lots and make yourself a private park-and-ride network, quit abusing public infrastructure where you have no business or right to do so.
Now whales can watch googlers on their way to work. Those lucky whales.
I still don't understand why googlers aren't working from home 98% of the time?
Maybe the employees could drive themselves to work like in the rest of the country???
A double do-good. Yea Google.
If Google's people are so friggin' smart why are they wasting all this money on buses and ferries? Keep all the employees at home, make them telecommute, and use Hangout for meetings. How hard is that???
If Google is bad for not impeding the NSA's surveillance of us, are they good for impeding our surveillance of whales?
This isn't about Google -really.
This is about the have nots starting to revolt against the have's.
And many of us on Slashdot have went from the have's to the have nots because of completely arbitrary reasons. Well, not arbitrary - we're not Third World Workers who can be taken advantage of - exploited.
We're being sidetracked because Google and their ilk say that Americans are incompetent.
Well, sonny, I'm passive aggressive. I use all those PR BS statements against them.
"Sorry boss, but [xyz] corp can't deliver on the promises of their sales[liars]people. They said publicaly that they can't get enough people. And if they can get people it's H1-Bs. Why not cut out the extremely expensive middle man, just hire and Indian IT firm, and get our bonuses for coming in under budget?"
calling nerds "tech bros" could be considered abusive - calling one subgroup by the name of the very group that bullied them at school its a bit like calling Obama a redneck or cracker.
shown by the Google sociopaths
Poor people have LESS possibility of movement than rich people. So by displacing them out of the city center, you are worsening the situation by adding $$$ for moving from their new place to their old job. And the more "rich" worker get a free pass and more possibility to find more job opportunity since they are in the center. Which result in more wealth concentration and the low class having more difficulty to rise out of it. If that's fine for you, then I can only guess you are not aprt of those which earn less than 40k$ a year and suddenly have to face rent rise, OR a similar rent (after moving), but increased cost of transport to their job. See, if this was done at no cost for the poorer class, and transportation was free you would have a point, but all that gentrification does, is more or less push the head of those with not much wealth even more udner the water.
Real simple, they chartered a boat for 30 days ?? Who cares what the boat is normally used for, they chartered it for another use.
If the company owning the boat didn't think it was profitable to do, I'm sure they wouldn't have done it.
Actually what I did was I chartered a tour bus that was last booked to transport people from an over 65 retirement community to an casino, and used the services of that company to send employees of my company off to a sporting event. What! You thought that I stood in front of a stop light, pulled out a gun and hijacked a bus full of senior citizens!?!
Using loaded terminology like "Co-Opt" only serves as flamebait.
I think the issue is that Google is using city bus stops without permission. In other words appropriating a public asset for private use. And possibly impacting the performance of a city service, have city buses had to wait while the google shuttle cleared the stop?
If Google were picking up its employees somewhere else there would probably be no controversy.
Google and the city of San Fran Cisco have apparently reached an agreement where Google, and other company's, buses can use city bus stops. Google et al will pay $100,000 per bus, per year. Google runs > 100 buses, so Google will pay the city $10million per year just to use the bus stops!
Seems ludicrous to me.
SF bans anyone other than the public transit (Muni) from using designated bus stops.
The whole thing is idiotic, from multiple angles, and the protesters are morons.
The root cause is that SF hasn't increased its housing stock noticeably in 30+ years. We've got something like 5% more units than in 1970. This is entirely due to SF local politics, and nothing else.
I'm pretty liberal, but the local politics of SF are insane. As are most of the local "I want it MY WAY" entitlement groups.
Is anyone else as bothered as me by the fact that the "Hello my name is" sticker on slide two of the presentation is such a low quality image? Oh god, slide three the bullets don't line up with the items, and then there's overlapping text on slide four. From there's it's pretty smooth sailing, but I would have tuned out real quick in that meeting.
Even if you do "own" the property, that does not constitute an unlimited right to do with it as you wish. It is not hereditary property, nor is it held by sovereign right. Your interest in the property is defined wholly by financial terms -- cash on the barrel-head. If someone else wants to spend more money to acquire that same property, so be it.
I don't wish to entirely repeat myself, but I found a metaphor that I feel particularly apt: this influx of wealth is like a rising tide. One may protest this (as demonstrated by Canute), but the flow of dollars, as with the tide, will not be swayed by argument, vandalism, nor rioting. To my mind, a far more productive use of time would be to recall that 'a rising tide lifts all boats', and apply oneself to learning programming. I did. Programming (albeit in its meanest form) is being taught to schoolchildren. Failing that, find a good excuse to separate these techies from their money -- real estate can't be their only interest. Failing that, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche": this is how markets work. I would be receptive to the idea that markets are not an appropriate solution for allocating housing, but no one seems to be making that argument, and frankly it's going to be a hard sell to the rest of the world.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I rode on a ferry once. I was heading to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe. So, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. 'Give me five bees for a quarter', you'd say. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah...the important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war; the only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
OMG! I was on the same ferry.
Ironically,I was on my way to Travers Town, but I had forgotten my onion. I pulled the brim of my fedora down to hide the shame that I felt from people's stares. The fedora didn't smell nice due to the sweat soaking it had received will I was fixing Willamay's bicycle the previous afternoon. She was a fine looking woman with gams that drove men to distraction and women would kill for. I'd always fancied her, even as a boy in school. All the other biys facied her too. Except of course for Basil, he always was an odd duck. Anyway, she was wearing a light yellow cotton summer dress, as she was inclined to do, and I couldn't not help her with her cycle. The repair took me a bit and, what with that summer's extreme heat, I worked myself into quite a lather. We talked of the heat and of lemonade refreshment and other pleasant things, while her dress swayed gently in the light breeze. Anyway, I'll never forget my shame from forgetting my onion nor the smell of that hat. You probably saw me yourself, but you were clearly too polite to remark directly about my missing onion. I did my best to withstand the shame as I stepped off the ferry and went on my way.
Dear Google,
It appears that you are spending too much money trying to satisfy some ungrateful residents that don't like your employees spending their money within their community. Maybe you should consider moving to our state and neighborhood where the taxes are cheaper, the air is cleaner, the cost of living is lower, and the people appreciate employers that bring jobs to the local economy.
Sincerely,
The other 49 states.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
It boils down to what you gain vs what you lose.
Would you rather make $100,000 and have to pay $2000 a month in rent
or
Make $50,000 and pay $1000 a month in rent?
What you gain vs what you pay is where your decision lies. Cost of living is high, but compensation for the work tends to be disproportionately higher. Take home $38k or take home $76k after paying your rent....
Why don't they just drive themselves like everywhere else in the country?
Maybe Greenpeace can pick up the slack and blockade them.
Turning a shit hole you wouldn't want to go to at night into somewhere decent to live.
It's a theodp submission; theodp is the Fox News of Slashdot summaries and he is particular butthurt re. Google. If the summary said: "Whale-watching boat chartered during the off-season," it wouldn't get as many comments or clicks.
Why would anybody WANT to live in San Francisco?
Every time I've visited there, I've left feeling more stressed and annoyed about being hassled by everything from city employees to crappy airport staff to bums to "artists" to traffic to rude assholes to silly prices for everything to whatever.
That place gives me a headache.
So some people are OK to be racist against, but not others, depending on their race?
Racist language being treated as acceptable hurts everyone.
Gentrification? In San Francisco?
I'm pretty sure that boat left the pier before Google ever IPOed.
That is a hard life. I worry about saving enough for retirement. I also worry what people in your economic position are going to do. I can't imagine you are able to save much. Living strictly on social security seems like it will be difficult. Most Googlers are pretty liberal and concerned about the wealth inequality in the country. But we also want to live in nice places too. What is your goal? To scare people with money away? Do you have any idea what an ideal solution looks like? I don't. I'd love to hear a proposal.
Whale watching sounds like some elitist feel good activity. I saw a whale so I am gonna donate money to its preservation. What kinda BS is that? Who rents these boats?
OK, did anyone bother to note that the whales are not migrating right now. It is the "offseason" for whale watching.
Why can't Google use drones to lift their employees up from their roofs, and just fly them over? Not only will they not inconvenience SF's lesser citizens, but the sight would be amusing.
Well, I don't think it was a problem until rent hikes and evictions. People do welcome neighbors until those neighbors force them out of their homes. I'm from NYC, I've seen it happen.
As far as the delights of moving to the Far West nation (see Colin Woodard's American Nations for clarification) I don't think a lot of people want to live there much. That's why rents are lower - it's less desirable. Still, Boulder, CO is pretty great.
By your logic, Google can do no wrong and that the protesters can do no right? You're part of the problem by suggesting that a company should be entitled to wage economic warfare if they're not served hand & foot.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Do you think it would be any different without rent control?
I don't think so.
From your explanation what I get is gentrification is a side effect of greed.
Greed is a side effect of human nature I guess, but as humans we can learn to control that. So I would say it is a symptom of bad ethics.
Is "co-opted" the right word? Probably not.
The right word is probably "rented".
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.