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Google Businesses

Now Googlers Are Protesting Company's Cloud Deals With Big Oil (bloomberg.com) 105

Activists inside Google are calling on management to ditch deals with oil and gas companies, the latest flare-up inside the technology giant. Bloomberg reports: In a letter published on Monday, more than 1,100 workers asked Google Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat to release a "company-wide climate plan" that commits to cutting carbon emissions entirely. The letter also asks Google to drop contracts that "enable or accelerate the extraction of fossil fuels." Since 2017, Google's cloud-computing unit has disclosed contracts with oil-services giant Schlumberger Ltd., Chevron Corp. and French energy company Total SA. Saudi Arabia's Aramco, the world's largest oil company, announced a tentative cloud deal with Google last year, although the internet giant has never confirmed the partnership.

"If Google is going to confront its share of responsibility for the climate crisis, that means not helping oil and gas companies extract fossil fuels," Ike McCreery, an engineer in Google's cloud division, said in an email. "This is a moment in history that requires urgent and decisive action." Alphabet Inc.'s Google has touted its green credentials for years. The company announced the largest ever corporate purchase of renewable energy in September. Starting in 2017, the company has matched the electricity bill from its massive data centers with equal purchases from renewable energy sources.
The Google employee letter also asks the company not to do business with U.S. immigration authorities, "arguing that more people are being forced to move across borders due to climate change," reports Bloomberg. Business Insider reports that U.S. Customs and Border Protection is testing a Google cloud service called Anthos, which lets organizations use multiple cloud providers at once.
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Now Googlers Are Protesting Company's Cloud Deals With Big Oil

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  • If they coal power the server farms, and give money (for nothing I guess) to a wind farm, that helps how?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      It is called "virtue signaling". Very popular pastime for modern folks who can afford it (a.k.a got rich during the tech boom).

    • by Rei ( 128717 )

      Only a quarter of the US's power is coal anymore [eia.gov]. This tired meme gets more tired every year. The percentage is even lower in places where Google's servers are located on average (for example, they have a high concentration on the west coast). And given that they pay to build new generating facilities to offset their consumption anyway, what exactly is the problem?

  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 04, 2019 @09:00PM (#59381446)

    ...there's the door.

    These a55hats are willing to draw a phat salary and 401K, yet they don't like that the company makes deals with oil and gas providers yet reasonably tries to offset with renewable energy. Somehow that's not good enough.

    Sorry buddy, that cloud-thingy that we all make money off does not power itself.

    • And they themselves continue to use oil and oil-based products. Of course, many of them are probably dumb enough to think plastic grows on trees or something.

      • by Hodr ( 219920 )

        There are several bioplastics made from cellulose (sourced from trees), as well as rubber/gum.

        Or was that the joke and I missed it?

        • They're often like paper straws.
          As in, they technically do the job, but very poorly.

        • There are several bioplastics made from cellulose (sourced from trees), as well as rubber/gum.

          Or was that the joke and I missed it?

          Bioplastics are typically used for bags and things like that. They usually degrade quickly (relatively) and aren't used for normal applications.

          I own a rubber tree, so, yeah, aware of that :)

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Don't like the company you work for... ...there's the door.

      If a company takes that attitude it is only going to get the worse employees who don't give a toss about the work or the fortunes of the company. It's the reason why contractors write shit code, they just want to collect their pay cheque and go home, knowing that they might not be around next week anyway.

      Google wisely tried to create an attractive work environment and get employees invested in the company.

      The other problem for Google is that there i

      • This is true until it's not true.
        By that, I mean many professions had this power, until automation made them redundant.

      • by malkavian ( 9512 )

        If a company takes that attitude, it can be a great company. The small minority that don't like it simply move on.
        Hell, Financial is pretty much like that; high paying, interesting work, but you rock the boat, there's the door. It's in great demand, and even nicked loads of very, very bright engineers from various disciplines.
        Now, while you're not rocking the boat, you get all kinds of nice incentives to play nice there. And the contractors that come through the door are usually pretty good. You vet the

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • inmates/asylum (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rogoshen1 ( 2922505 ) on Monday November 04, 2019 @09:03PM (#59381456)

    Kind of refreshing to see that a group of employees without any kind of union protection are able to start the process of running the company into the ground.

    Sure it starts with 'woke' politics or whatever the fuck these hipsters are going on about; but that momentum will continue and rot the company from the inside out.
      Wages/hours/whatever.

    Because we're talking about google this is of course, a good thing.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      Kind of refreshing to see that a group of employees without any kind of union protection are able to start the process of running the company into the ground.

      Hmm, no: those employees are mere mosquitoes on the elephant's back, and the elephant doesn't much care at this point. But if they get a bit too hitchy, the elephant will swat them in less time that it takes to say "here's your pink slip".

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      employees without any kind of union protection are able to start the process of running the company into the ground.

      Google is huge and growing. They are hardly going "into the ground".

      However, if a fairly large recession arrives and employment choices dwindle, Google employees will probably think a second time before making waves.

      They are in a position where they can make waves at the moment, for good or bad, but usually that condition doesn't last long, barring strong unionization.

    • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

      1,000 people complaining out of ~100,000 employees is 1% of the company. They're not going to run the company into the ground unless the CEO goes full woke and caves to their demands. In which case it's the CEO running it into the ground.

    • Good wages and working hours would be reasonable things to demand of management. Wokiness not so much.

      To the workers: if you want to reduce the use of fossil fuel, you need to address the demand side. Killing the supply side helps by raising prices and (hopefully) reducing demand, but has a risk of killing the economy (or a whole bunch of people). How well do you think our current economy ans society would fare without fossil fuels?
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Yes peas... I mean workers, don't forget your place. You are consumable, disposable, commodity hardware that is of little value to the company, and you should be grateful we gave you a job in the first place. There are plenty more like you out there so keep your mouth shut and get back to rowing before we have to take away the coffee machine.

      Remember, you have no power, we own it all. Don't even think of unionising.

      • Sigh. I work in a Union shop.
        The absolute laziest people become stewards, and spend a good portion of the time they should be working talking on the phone about "union things". Which is really just gossip and trying to sound important.
        Often, the things they complain about are so small as to be completely unimportant, but they've decided to" take a stand." Likewise, unless they like you they will ignore any issues you bring up. You actually have a better chance complaining to management.
        it's like debating th

      • by malkavian ( 9512 )

        Straw man much?
        That has nothing in reply to the parent, but had a lot of diversions in it.

        Have you ever worked in management, AniMojo (actually interested)?

  • by fred911 ( 83970 ) on Monday November 04, 2019 @09:05PM (#59381460) Journal

    I would venture to say that a good amount of the current consumed by Alphabet is produced by oil. Matching energy expenditures with equal purchases of ''renewable'' energy is applaudable. But, it most likely amounts to carbon swaps, amounting to no effect on oil producers.

      So the employees thought that beating up on Big Oil wasn't sufficient enough and decided to kick in immigration and figured somehow a reasonable person would find a causative link...

    please
     

    • Yes, carbon credits are a terrible scam. We need cap and tax, not cap and trade. But that doesn't jerk wall street off sufficiently, so it hasn't happened.

      • by Rei ( 128717 )

        The logic behind trading credits is efficiency. If you just cap everyone, you may be forcing a certain industry to reduce CO2 emissions in a very expensive manner, where some other industry could reduce it much more cheaply. With credit trading, a company that has expensive-to-eliminate CO2 pays another industry that has cheap-to-eliminate CO2 to do more than its fair share, to make up for it.

        IMHO, my ideal preference is CAT (Carbon-Added Tax), or even more general PATs (Pollution-Added Taxes), with the t

        • It doesn't make up for anything. All it does is rubber stamp pollution instead of encouraging someone with a better idea to employ it, by keeping the actions of the polluters profitable - while making helping them continue to pollute profitable to someone else. That's just cutting off the top of the blanket and sewing it onto the bottom, while we all stifle beneath it.

          • by Rei ( 128717 )

            What is the difference, in terms of total emissions, between:

            Entity A eliminates 100 of their 200 tonnes of CO2 emitted per year
            Entity B eliminates 100 of their 200 tonnes of CO2 per year ... vs.:

            Entity A eliminates 0 of their 200 tonnes of CO2 emitted per year
            Entity B eliminates all 200 tonnes of their CO2 per year

            ?

            If it costs A more to eliminate CO2 emissions than B, then it only makes economic sense for A to pay B to eliminate extra emissions so that A doesn't have to. Unless your goal is to eliminate a

            • You didn't read (or perhaps understand) my comment, and then presented a false dichotomy to prove it. Not interested.

        • by malkavian ( 9512 )

          Economically, a carbon tax does make sense, as by not including it, you're actually missing of part of the actual cost of production.
          That tax needs to be driven by markets that sink carbon, and the cost of business there. The more it costs to sink carbon per unit, the more the production cost that uses it. That's how waste management gets done, and for something of this magnitude, it needs to be built into the economics of the supply chain.
          That puts pressure to have far less polluting mechanisms of produc

    • by Rei ( 128717 )

      I would venture to say that a good amount of the current consumed by Alphabet is produced by oil.

      Not in the US. Oil makes up an almost meaninglessly small fraction of US electricity generation. [eia.gov] It falls into the sub-1% "Other" category. Only in Hawaii is it meaningful, but even there [hawaiianelectric.com] it's only about 18% these days.

      As a general rule, oil is too expensive of an energy source to burn for electricity; it's as a general rule saved for vehicles which can only run on oil products. Coal is cheaper than oil, an

      • by fred911 ( 83970 )

        ''In December 2016, Google announced that -starting in 2017- it will power all of its data centers, as well as all of its offices, from 100% renewable energy. The commitment will make Google "the world's largest corporate buyer of renewable power, with commitments reaching 2.6 gigawatts (2,600 megawatts) of wind and solar energy"''

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        I stand corrected. Apparently this is old news.

      • As a general rule, oil is too expensive of an energy source to burn for electricity; it's as a general rule saved for vehicles which can only run on oil products.

        And for heating where you don't have the energy losses inherent in transforming it to kinetic energy. Granted that it's the cheapest energy source for heating either, but for areas where the heating fuel has to be trucked to residences, it's cheaper per BTU than propane.

    • Employees at Google need to calm down and think about this ... they are usually good at that type of thing. And carbon swaps will not save the day either. There is a point where the cost of oil production from extraction, through transport, then refinement, becomes cost-prohibitive and the carbon sequestered in the ground will stay there. We just have to be imaginative enough to find that point ...

      We are not there yet, but we do need innovation to get there and it must be on a global scale. How do we

  • these protestors rant about Google's role in global warming by posting, with their computers, rants on blogs hosted in big-ass datacenters, all of which burn a fuckload of power all day, every day. And guess what (still) provides the majority of this power? Oil of course.

    • Oil of course.

      Of course? Where are these data centers, Puerto Rico? Some other island?

      There's a reason why big DCs are being built where electricity is cheap like Iceland (geothermal), Pac NW (hydro), or the midwest (wind). Running a DC on oil power would be ill-advised from a profitability standpoint.

      • Why always bring up tiny little Iceland? The USA produces far more geothermal energy than little Iceland.
        • by Rei ( 128717 )

          Yes, but the US has ~100 times the area and ~1000 times the population, but only 5 times more geothermal power.

          Well over 99% of our electricity is geothermal + hydroelectric + wind (overwhelmingly the first two, the latter is a relatively new addition and still rather small scale). That, and the low electricity price (and a few other things, like surplus of unused buildings at the old NATO base, and low ambient temperatures for cooling), is why it's common for data centres to be located here (at least when

    • Oil-powered data centers? Maybe when there's a grid failure, but otherwise? Where the hell do you live that you have oil powered data centers?
  • by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Monday November 04, 2019 @09:14PM (#59381476)
    have no problem working with/for the Chinese Tyrants and Military but anything America is bad! Got it!

    Just my 2 cents ;)
    • there were stories on /. and everything.

      Can you try harder with your trolling? Just say something about Millennials and Avocado Toast or something.
    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Strange how they always protest the US gov/mil, big oil... but are so happy to fully support working for Communist China.
      The role of the good censor...
      Happy to support illegal migrants in the USA and other criminals...
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      If you hadn't noticed they also got Google's plans for a Chinese search engine shut down too.

      That actually shows just how much power they have. The Chinese market would be worth many, many billions to Google and their lack of presence there means they risk Chinese companies replacing them like Huawei has done.

  • And that, my friends is how you get Stalin-style purges. Eventually the shareholders and execs will get tired of this and fire everyone even remotely associated with all these walkouts, and protests, and all the other SJW bullshit, with extreme prejudice. It's not like Google's position in cloud is so strong that it can piss away cloud marketshare just because some employees don't like gasoline (yet fly all over the world half a dozen times a year, drive a luxury car, and live in 3000sqft+ houses, etc).

  • Once there were Unions to balance the power between Corporate Greed and Ordinary Workers.

    This is something new. Workers with recognized skills, who are essential to corporate success, and they have the nerve to stand up and protest Corporate Greed when it goes against Human Needs.

    A new balance of power between elite decision makers and those who actually make the company successful. These Workers may be emotional followers of some righteous Green philosophy, but it marks a rare moment in history where Worke

    • by malkavian ( 9512 )

      If managed effectively (and if you're a crap manager, your company will suffer because of it), workers are always listened to by managers. That's why there are so many courses in conflict resolution, man management and so on.
      Speaking as someone who's done a horde of management roles in the past, man management is my least favourite. It can be ugly, messy, confrontational, and very stressful. It can be intensely rewarding too at times when you get a good team, and you manage the environment such that they

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Of course you should protest doing business with big oil. Oil companies impact carbon emissions. But while your at it you should also protest doing business with automobile companies as they produce cars that use oil. Canâ(TM)t be hypocrites and let one go while denying the other. We also canâ(TM)t let companies like Tesla slide as they simply encourage people to keep their old self centered transportation habits. Of course trucks and buses also use oil so weâ(TM)ll have to refuse to do busin

  • after adding too many activist "workers".
    Don't want your brand all over the next "protest", "cult" event, green virtue signalling protest?
    Make sure the person getting the job can do the math, has the skills.
    Then consider their past activism while getting an education? Did they fill social media with their direct protest methods?
    Will they become a good person once they enter the work force? Move on from all that green virtue signalling?
    Will they keep protesting once at work using your brands good name
    • by Dave Cole ( 9740 )

      I take it you would have happily helped IBM catalog all of the Jews for extermination by the Nazis...

      • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        The US gov buying in support for the private sector is not an illegal act in the USA ...
        Would it be better to have the US gov only get products/services from full time mil base staff and gov workers?
        No buying form the private sector, 100% gov design, testing, production, use.. with tax payers funding the new "factory" needed for each generation of hardware?
        Turn US mil to setting up production lines and have troops make next gen computer parts all day?
        The US mil can do the "mil" on weekends?
        The US
  • Would be awesome (Score:4, Insightful)

    by registrations_suck ( 1075251 ) on Monday November 04, 2019 @10:29PM (#59381706)

    Would be awesome if companies at all kinds just came out and said, "If you don't like our business practices, there is the fucking door. Quit your job in protest, otherwise, STFU and get back to work."

    • Would be awesome if companies at all kinds just came out and said, "If you don't like our business practices, there is the fucking door. Quit your job in protest, otherwise, STFU and get back to work."

      Would you honestly prefer to work for a company that told you that, vs one that listens to you?

      Google apparently feels that its employees are sufficiently valuable that it chooses instead to alter its business practices. Project Dragonfly, the Chinese search engine, was shut down after employee protests. Military projects were shut down after employee protests. The employees who are complaining might win this one, too.

      Many companies say that their employees are their most valuable resource, Google se

  • Just Bake the Cake! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseer@noSPam.earthlink.net> on Monday November 04, 2019 @10:30PM (#59381710)

    So, we have a bunch of people unhappy with how others live their lives, and in response they choose to not provide them services that they requested. Is this acceptable or is it not?

    On one hand we have a baker that is asked to create a customized wedding cake for a same sex couple, the baker refuses. The baker didn't refuse business, let's make that clear, only the services of a custom cake. If this couple ordered a generic cake then the baker had no problem, the problem was over a cake with a message that the baker took offense with. This baker became the subject of international news and debate, and at least one lawsuit before the highest court in the USA. There were demands buy politicians, celebrities, and the average citizen to, "just bake the cake!"

    On the other hand we have a large internet services company that is doing business with oil companies and people are protesting. What's the difference here? Why can't Google "just bake the cake"?

    The difference is that one is something that the professionally outraged agree with, and the other they don't agree with.

    If you all want to make a big deal on this and not do business with someone because of what they believe then remember that others can choose to not do business with you. Pick your battles carefully. Protesting company policy can end up with you being out of a job and a reputation of being a troublemaker. This might be winning the battle but losing the war.

  • by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Monday November 04, 2019 @10:36PM (#59381726)
    At the start of my career I worked for a credit bureau. We were responsible for the credit scores used in probably 25% of the loans in Canada at the time. I was concerned that our pattern matching for how likely someone was to default on a loan was creating a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. The data showed a person's chance of defaulting on a loan was more heavily weighted on who you were (ethnic back ground, parents education, where you lived) than what you have done (earning, credit payments...). I very nervously brought it up. The people in the meeting appreciated it and then showed me they were already on it. They were already teasing the correlations out of the data and also modifying our other offerings to avoid this while also making our product more valuable to our customers.*

    However, providing credit worthiness evaluations to our customers was our core business. We weren't involved in evaluating the moral worthiness of our customers.. Google employees should care about the value and safety of their products. If they care about climate change talk to their political representatives. If they have an ethical dilemma with their company's customers quietly bring it up and then either quit or be quiet.

    *They added a likelihood of fraud score. If someone had a low fraud score the provider of credit could then go back and ask for more information about their customer. By separating one type of risk that customers could mitigate we could make the credit scores more dependent on the borrower's past behaviour.
    • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

      If they care about climate change talk to their political representatives. If they have an ethical dilemma with their company's customers quietly bring it up and then either quit or be quiet.

      I don't see why there should be an obligation to keep quiet about it. If they think the company is doing bad things, why shouldn't they tell the public? Doesn't the public have a right to know?

      Suppose that an Apple supplier is using child labor in China. Should Apple employees turn a blind eye and pretend it's not happening? Even if you think child labor is a good thing, in which case you can just keep buying Apple products, there's no reason to prevent anyone else from making that decision for themselves.

      • by malkavian ( 9512 )

        You get that there's child labour because families can't afford to feed the children? Rural China is poor. Very, very poor (thank Mao and his policies for that, they're still echoing after all this time).
        China is working on overcoming that, but it's a long, long slog. In the meantime, families do what they can to get by. China makes some rock bottom price items by getting the cheapest of the cheap labour, using the cheapest of the cheap ingredients, and selling that to a ready market whose main competit

  • Unions seek to maximize the share of a business profit for those who actually provided the labor to produce that profit.

    This seems to be headed in the direction of ensuring there's no profit to share.
  • by ArhcAngel ( 247594 ) on Monday November 04, 2019 @11:12PM (#59381838)
    Most "big oil" companies are leading research into alternative energy sources. Most of these alternatives require petroleum derived components and these companies see the wisdom in having more than one option. Case in point, Environmentalists and SJW tried for decades to shut down coal based energy and failed. Someone figured out an inexpensive procedure to get at gas trapped in the US shale regions and BOOM! coal goes the way of the Dodo (In the US). Sure you can argue natural gas isn't a renewable but it IS cleaner than coal.
  • by msauve ( 701917 ) on Monday November 04, 2019 @11:25PM (#59381872)
    If you don't like what your employer does, at least have the courage of your convictions and quit your job. Pissing and moaning while still taking a paycheck is the coward's way.

    I'll bet he uses some fossil fueled vehicle (yes, even a Tesla or Googly bus) to get to his high paying job.

    The semi-free market is taking care of pushing fossil fuels to where they're economic - wind and solar are quickly displacing fossil fuels for electrical generation.
  • by mschuyler ( 197441 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @12:02AM (#59381960) Homepage Journal

    And how many ride their bicycles?

    Just curious. Guessing the metric is not tabulated.

    • And how many ride their bicycles?

      Just curious. Guessing the metric is not tabulated.

      I don't think it is. I do know, however, that there are only enough parking spaces at the Google Mountain View office for a fairly small percentage of employees to drive. Many do ride bicycles to work, though that requires living close to the office, which means paying eye-popping rents for tiny apartments. More ride buses, which are fossil fuel-powered, but more efficient on a per-person basis.

  • Employees of a company should have a formal say in its policies. A board seat for employee representative like they have in nordic could be a starting point.

    • by Hodr ( 219920 )

      They do have a say, when they sign their employment contract.

      When I hire a company to pick up my garbage, if one day they tell me they won't collect glass and I need to recycle it I do not need to consider their demand. I can and should fire them and hire a new company. If they stated up front they don't collect recyclable materials, then I need to separate my garbage or risk them rightfully refusing to collect it.

      (for the record I do recycle. Mostly. Sometimes).

    • by Mashiki ( 184564 )

      It's called a CO-OP, they exist. Some thrive like the company named after it here in Canada, they're pretty much involved in farming, forestry and mining. Most however don't thrive, rather they collapse because of competing company visions and direction.

  • The moment when those activist betray their morals the first time to make sure they have food on their table and can pay their car-loans is when the activist become adults. It's called growing up.

    On the other hand, if they decide to forgo the salary to keep their moral values, that's also fine. Then they accepts the consequences of their actions. That's also a way to grow up.

    Any way it's a healthy development like the sun melting snow-flakes in spring.

  • ....while they cheerfully work with China?

    https://news.yahoo.com/china-r... [yahoo.com]
    (As if HK wasn't enough, China now following Serbian long term genocidal 'ethnic cleansing' policies by arranging the raping of women while their husbands are incarcerated.)

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