Google May Not Be Evil But There Are Evil Googlers

Sep 17, 2010 - 8:06 am 2 by
Filed Under Misc Google

Gawker broke a story named Google Engineer Stalked Teens, Spied on Chats. I'll quote the beginning...

David Barksdale, a 27-year-old former Google engineer, repeatedly took advantage of his position as a member of an elite technical group at the company to access users' accounts, violating the privacy of at least four minors during his employment, we've learned. Barksdale met the kids through a technology group in the Seattle area while working as a Site Reliability Engineer at Google's Kirkland, Wash. office. He was fired in July 2010 after his actions were reported to the company. [Update: Google has confirmed the security breach. An update appears below.]

I bet a lot of the Googlers who read this blog know David. Google of course fired him, but many are saying Google should have turned him over to the police.

In short, a company's founders, leaders, principles may not be "evil" or whatever Google claims they are not. But when you hire so many people, even with a very detailed hiring process, some will turn out to be evil. We all know, the people who make up the company define the company.

Forum discussion at Google Blogoscoped Forums.

 

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