Education
Training documents from Google recommend that language monopolies be avoided
According to a new Markup report, Alphabet and Google employees are trained to avoid using certain words and phrases in their internal communications. However, Google says that the practice, which it calls a standard compliance course, has been in effect for years.
Words matter, says the document titled Five Thumb Rules for Written Communications. Particularly in antitrust law, "the Markup says. The term 'market, barriers to entry' and 'network effects' should be avoided by employees throughout the enterprise, including engineers, sales personnel, staff, vendors, contractors and temp workers
One of the documents reads, the parent company is very sued, and we have our fair share in the regulatory investigations.
In an email to the Verge, Google spokesman Julie Tarallo McAlister said that the training documents are full standard compliance training courses for the compliance of competitive law offered by most large companies to employees and that they are available over a decade. We instruct employees not to focus on or opt for competitors but to compete fairly and build great products.
She pointed out similar American Bar Association and "any major American" company manuals for compliance with employees.
Some antitrust laws are described in the training documents described by The Markup, and one document advises you to use data from third parties to describe Google's "search position" and never to print or distribute slides for submissions or pitches. According to that document, employees should "use the term 'user choice for Google Search' and not the term market share. Other documents propose that the terms "industry," "space," "area" be used in place of "market," and that the terms challenges be used instead of barriers.
Last week during a hearing of the CEOs, when communication between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and CFO David Ebersman became public, the dangers posed by a company's internal documents as evidence were displayed. In 2012, Zuckerberg writes: The network effects around social goods and a finite number of different mechanics to invent are present. In 2012, he discussed the possible acquisition of Instagram. When someone wins at a certain mechanic, it is hard for others to replace them without doing anything else.
During the July 29th hearing, Rep. JerryNadler (D-NY) said Facebook documents wanted to buy Instagram to reduce competition, an important focus of the investigation by the Subcommittee. Facebook bought [Instagram] instead of competing with it, Nadler said. The anti-trust laws have been designed to prevent exactly this type of anti-competitive acquisition.
Many antitrust investigations on how Google does business are ongoing. Attorneys generals from 50 countries and territories announced last September that they had opened their own antitrust investigation into the Google advertising and search enterprise and, according to reports, last month in California.
At the hearing of the 29th July, Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, said that the company was attempting to comprehend the trends from data we see and use to improve user's products, but he did not address the concerns raised by Committee members directly against trusts.
