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Google Drops Out of Pentagon's $10 Billion Cloud Competition (bloomberg.com)
Citing corporate values, Google has decided not to compete for the Pentagon's $10 billion cloud-computing contract. Bloomberg reports: The project, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud, or JEDI, involves transitioning massive amounts of Defense Department data to a commercially operated cloud system. Companies are due to submit bids for the contract, which could last as long as 10 years, on October 12th. Google's announcement on Monday came just months after the company decided not to renew its contract with a Pentagon artificial intelligence program, after extensive protests from employees of the internet giant about working with the military. The company then released a set of principles designed to evaluate what kind of artificial intelligence projects it would pursue. "We are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn't be assured that it would align with our AI Principles," a Google spokesman said in a statement. "And second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications."
The spokesman added that Google is "working to support the U.S. government with our cloud in many ways." "Had the JEDI contract been open to multiple vendors, we would have submitted a compelling solution for portions of it," they said. "Google Cloud believes that a multi-cloud approach is in the best interest of government agencies, because it allows them to choose the right cloud for the right workload."
The spokesman added that Google is "working to support the U.S. government with our cloud in many ways." "Had the JEDI contract been open to multiple vendors, we would have submitted a compelling solution for portions of it," they said. "Google Cloud believes that a multi-cloud approach is in the best interest of government agencies, because it allows them to choose the right cloud for the right workload."
Not supporting the USA?
Time for the US mil and gov to fully support much better US brands that are ready to fully support the USA.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Good time to buy Amazon stock I guess.
"We are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn't be assured that it would align with our AI Principles," a Google spokesman said in a statement."
That's okay. They can bid for the Strategic Intervention Taskforce Headquarters instead.
The trustbusters are coming.
The more they drop out of the mainstream, the better. Considering the fact that they basically invented building an empire on thievery and vapor, I think we'd be better off without them altogether. Seriously, with tech where it is today, I doubt very much that anyone would miss them, or even notice that they were gone.
Because is so righteous.
Nobody who has worked for google in the past three years can plausibly deny that they know what kind of company they work for.
The people responsible for these kinds of decisions and projects should understand that their actions are just cause for any hiring manager to question their ethics and judgement, and who understand that companies like Google and those who want to work for them need to be put on notice. Working for Google is the kiss of death for your career.
"Don't be evil" is so, like, last millennium...
its just glorified statistics. call it what it is...
Maybe the Chinese gave them a better offer. (or ultimatum)
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
"We're happy to help with social control and repression, but we draw the line at actually killing people."
You take their money, you play by their rules. Who wants to bet the Trump admin had some rider about equal representation in the Google search, and Google couldnâ(TM)t stomach it?
The real reason why they dropped is because they could not meet the strict security requirements for the project, not because of some ignorant sense of honor or principals.
Seriously, Google is investing heavily on China's "great wall", but somehow supporting USA is evil?
I guess google is choosing not to be competitive in this area. A company that values money over virtue signalling will end up passing google.
There is little difference between a cloud and a mainframe. The future is so exciting!
Yep, $10B is a lot. But when ad words are grossing over $200B with NET freaking margins of 30-40%, AND it's the US gov, who's a PIA to do biz with, it's easy to say 'because principles.' You can bet AMAZ and msft are pleased they're gone.
You can bet the sales team under Diane Greene are looking for greener pastures right now, as she took a decision to not take TEN BILLION in top line dollars.
Full disclosure, I've met enough of the enterprise sales, biz dev and "product managers" to conclude that these folks are some of , if not the, smartest engineers in the world, who equally have zero biz clue. They're already #3 in the cloud space and moves like this will convince prospects and partners that they're not serious about competing for share.
Da fuq "single sourcing cuz rules". That's inaccurate. The contract officer needs to show due diligence in vendor selection. That doesn't mean single source is against the law, or any such rules. They just need to justify why they didn't put out a proper bid.
I've not looked at the RFP or RFI, but it's not a hard and fast rule that Google was so called column fodder.
But refuse to make a cake for someone and the mob left will run you out of business.
Google is now a communist asset. They are moving IP and workforce to china, and working with Chinese government on censorship and human monitoring. Pure Evil.
Google exploits it's customers' data for further revenue opportunities. Not likely the Pentagon is going to allow this. So Google passes. Smart move.
Have gnu, will travel.
[1] Founded by a Russian [Brin]
[2] Current boss is from India [Pinchai] (Is he still an Indian citizen?, or perhaps dual?)
[3] Keeps trying to find a way to help China oppress billions of people.
[4] Keeps refusing to help the US military (without which the world would now live under global NAZIism or global totalitarian communism)
[5] Employs large numbers of foreign workers on H1-B visas.
[6] Fires people for expressing non-politically-correct [enforced leftism] viewpoints.
[7] Spies on people to an extent that might make the old East German Stasi blush.
I'd like to think of Google as an American success story, by I cannot - they appear to be an offensive foreign influence outfit that has failed to register as a foreign agent.
Theyd almost certainly be singing a different tune
Google workers leave their countries of origin behind and come working for the sovereign nation of Google. Google workers working with the governments of their host countries would be a corporate treason.
Translation: I am not American, never met any Americans, nor know anything except Hollywood and socialist websites but I am fully qualified to rant about it from a superior position because I am a ultra leftist and therefore automatically smart.
They announce they "choose" not to compete for this contract right at the same time they shutdown Google+ due to massive data breach. Related? I think so.
I can tell you that in this specific instance, the RFP was blatantly designed to be met by Amazon's AWS (or technically, their GovCloud fork of AWS) and no one else.
I had personal friends who served on the Murmansk run.
For those with a poor education, that was a regular run of supplies and military equipment the US sent to soviet Russia by the US Navy and Merchant marines through frozen northern waters during WWII to keep them from being wiped out by the NAZIs, who they started the allied with. The USA provided the soviets with trucks, planes, artillery, ammunition, medicine, food and even ships... and in the end, the Russians reverse-engineered a lot of it and used their poor knock-offs against us during the early years of the post-WWII Cold War. The soviets were happy for the help, but that did not stop them from keeping any American aircraft that landed in their territory after being damaged over Germany and unable to make it back to American lines. The early post-WWII soviet bombers were clones of the Boeing B-29s that they grabbed in the East. The soviets also had another nasty habit - they kept some Americans, probably as sources of intel, and never returned them to the US.
So, no, to the extent that the Russians were on the winning side in WWII it was not by good behavior and it would not have been possible without the USA. The Russian model of winning by signing a treaty with NAZIs to jointly gobble up Poland, then throwing poorly-equipped peasants into a meat grinder and proving they could accept more of their own dead than the Germans could - until the USA could step-in with massive donations of decent equipment is not a workable model without the USA.
For $10billion how much of a cloud system could you build for yourself. Also, ten billion? Where the fuck do they come up with these numbers?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Google has gone from the 'Do No Evil' company to a Shit Company. How long until they are just plain evil? So with this story they have 'corporate values'. Really? What does that mean, when today we find out they had a massive data breach but decided not to notify the public because it would draw 'immediate regulatory scrutiny'. What it means is they carry around the flag of 'Do No Evil' and use it to hide all the evil things they actually are doing.
Son, you cannot pick this out of context and scream "muh Fascist" without looking like a fool. The full context is Google's broad behavior which includes being unwilling to bend to employee demands that they give up on China and its demands. Funny how that works. They won't help the USAF build better drones that might be able to better avoid civilian casualties, but they'll actively help identify and punish political "criminals" in China.
I am an American, and I can't even begin to provide a good starting point for just how full of bullshit you are here. We had congressional inquiries when a handful of soldiers were killed in Nigeria, FFS. A handful. The only real socialized medicine we have is for veterans. If our political branches supported a genuine meat-grinder for our military, and it wasn't based unequivocally in defending us from a devastating attack that would kill millions of civilians, our veterans would rise up and burn Washington DC with the support of most of our police forces.
APK is off his meds again. Someone call the men in the white coats to get him.
This is probably their actual main reason for jumping out of this. Their fear of regulation is also why they were so late on informing the public about consumer data leaking out of Google+.
The "Don't Be Evil" thing became embarrassingly ridiculous a while ago, which is why you had to ditch it. So, please, do not insult the intelligence of people, Google.
Google is an enemy of the state.
I am APK the great "LORD of HOSTS", a.k.a. AlecStaar from ArsTechnica or Alexander Peter Kowalski.
See subject & APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux h t t p : / / I . a m . a . f u c k i n g / a s s h o l e . r e t a r d . z i p (remove spaces between characters & download).
I am the godlike creator of various GUI front-ends for other people's configuration files.
Don't call me out on anything unless you are willing to prove you too can write some strings to a file programmatically
I think only one person responds to me as I shitpost and that I dusted them on another site, but in reality I am widely hated but just can't admit it to myself.
When people state the truth about me I get really mad and accuse them of projecting which is something I do all the time.
Mistaking mockery and parody for impersonation is how I think people flatter me because I can't possibly understand that they detest me.
See me lash out at one person for 2 weeks straight and claim everyone who mocks my retarded ass is actually them.
Bask in my debilitating mental illness
I just don't understand why every site I post on everyone makes fun of me, it can't be because I am a shit stick but instead because they are all Ne'er-do-well SOYboy Jealous JOWIEs.
Witness my descent into madness
APK
Is there any cloud service in the world that is secure against hackers/malware? If not, then, is it really a good idea to put whole US military data in any cloud service?
The *REAL* reason is that google looks at all your data when it is in their cloud, and the Pentagon won't allow it, so google couldn't have won anyway. Principles my ass.
Moving government data onto servers that they have no control over sounds like an absolutely god-awful idea. Why would any company want to move to "cloud"-based storage? Are they forgetting that "the cloud" is just some guy's computer?
Moving government data onto servers that they have no control over sounds like an absolutely god-awful idea. Why would any company want to move to "cloud"-based storage? Are they forgetting that "the cloud" is just some guy's computer?
Companies only really care about the bottom line and the SLA. If a cloud company offers it for cheaper and has the terms and SLA that the company expects they can get with their own people (or better), then they'll take it. IME, Google probably backed out because they won't meet the government's terms for security and control. Google typically won't even discuss HIPAA terms in contracts. Along with the latest Google+ breach, they probably just aren't up to doing the security that the government is requiring int heir contracts.
Google just better hope non of their shareholders have a problem with this, otherwise isn't going to an even more costly decision for them.
I'll be here all week, try the fish!