Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight
Is there any doubt that this is some kind of score-settling? Republicans <i>hate</i> Google. I don&#x27;t think people inside the SV bubble appreciate just how intense this hatred has become. You know the seething, implacable anger, that bile that comes up out of your stomach when you think of a politician you don&#x27;t like? A lot of republicans feel that way about Google.<p>This hatred doesn&#x27;t come out of nowhere. Google&#x27;s leaders could have chosen to make the company neutral and tolerant. Instead, they bred a culture of political zealotry from top to bottom. The partisan hatred that the company engendered then leaked into the outside world. The inevitable result? Half of the United States power structure sees Google as an irredeemably biased political project masquerading as a tech company. Is it? Maybe not. But whether this judgement is true <i>doesn&#x27;t matter</i> --- what matter is the perception that the company allowed its internal activists to create. It was an unforced error, and it&#x27;s one that I think will become an infamous cautionary tale in the coming decades.<p>Lesson to corporate leaders: don&#x27;t encourage politics at work; don&#x27;t encourage a culture of demonizing a political faction in your home country that wins about half the time; and especially don&#x27;t hold a company-wide all hands election after this faction wins the election and lament that &quot;we lost&quot;.