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Google Facing Lawsuit from Fired Conservative Employees

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By Breitbart. Google must face a class-action lawsuit brought by Republican attorney Harmeet K. Dhillon on behalf of the tech giant’s conservative employees, according to a California court.

Current and former Google employees say in a lawsuit that the company discriminates against non-progressives on the basis of their viewpoint, and against whites, Asians, and males on the basis of sex and race.

Google attempted to have the case dismissed. But a judge in California, where political discrimination is illegal, ruled against the company.

The case will now move to a legal process known as discovery — meaning that Google must provide Dhillon and other attorneys working on the case access to its internal documents.

This is potentially a huge problem for the tech giant, as previous leaks of internal documents and video have repeatedly exposed the company’s extreme political bias. (Read more from “Google Facing Lawsuit from Fired Conservative Employee” HERE)

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Google Lawsuit: Hispanic Engineer Claims Company ‘Blacklisted’ Him for Political Views

By Breitbart. Former Google employee Manuel Amador is one of three men who have joined James Damore’s class-action lawsuit against Google. He alleges a workplace in which “hostile, retaliatory, and oppressive conduct” would occur, and that ultimately he was “blacklisted” from future employment with the Silicon Valley giant.

According to the lawsuit, Amador, who joined Google as a Systems Engineer, eventually left the company after being asked to apologize for something he did not say.

Despite being faced with such hostility, Amador continued to voice his opinions, in direct defiance of those at Google that seek to silence and expel all opposing viewpoints. The culture of intolerance, however, eventually became too much for Amador to bear. In or around June 2016, Amador was called to a meeting with Google HR as a result of someone falsely accusing Amador of believing that people have differing levels of intelligence based on that person’s race. Amador has never thought that, does not believe it to be true, and has never written or spoken as if he believed it to be true. This false complaint was filed by an anonymous complainant as means to stifle Amador’s political activities and conversations at Google, was done to harass Amador on the basis of his race and/or gender, and resulted in Amador receiving a letter from Google reprimanding Amador.

Despite the complaint being entirely fabricated, Google sided with the harassers and asked that Amador issue an apology. At that point, Amador felt compelled to leave Google as a result of the hostile work environment created by, and left unchecked at, Google. To stay at Google brought with it an unacceptably high risk that Amador’s personal and professional reputation would be permanently tarnished by those at Google bent on suppressing and expelling those who hold viewpoints different from their own, Google-disfavored races, and/or males. By demanding that Amador apologize over a falsified complaint, Google sent a clear message that it would allow and enable such hostile, retaliatory, and oppressive conduct to occur unchecked.

(Read more from “Google Lawsuit: Hispanic Engineer Claims Company ‘Blacklisted’ Him for Political Views” HERE)

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Google FIRES Conservative Employee for Revealing Company Bias

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By The Daily Caller. The Republican Google engineer who penned an open letter about the company’s “outrage mobs” and “witch hunts” was fired on Friday, The Daily Caller has learned. . .

The day before his suspension, Wacker went on Fox Business to discuss the company’s anti-conservative bias, telling Trish Regan, “You don’t know what’s going to offend somebody next and a lot of time they are going to HR over these trivial things.” . . .

The firing came just before news broke over the weekend that the Department of Justice was preparing an antitrust probe into the search giant. The company filed an appeal yesterday against a $1.7 billion antitrust penalty imposed by the European Commission over AdSense, Google’s ad sales platform. (Read more from “Google FIRES Conservative Employee for Revealing Company Bias” HERE)

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Google’s Outrage Mobs and Witch Hunts

By Mike Wacker. Google has become a company where outrage mobs and witch hunts dominate its culture. These outrage mobs and witch hunts have become an existential threat not only to Google’s culture internally, but to Google’s trust and credibility externally.

Google has long claimed to be a nonpartisan company, yet like many other tech companies, they also maintain many policies against “hate speech”. How do we reconcile these two apparently conflicting goals? While this statement came from a spokesperson for Facebook, it could just as easily apply to Google, Twitter, and many other tech companies. . .

So what exactly is the definition of hate speech? Well, let’s just ask the outrage mobs at Google that succeeded. One outrage mob formed when Google sponsored CPAC, and they created an internal petition titled, “Google, Don’t Sponsor Hate.” Another outrage mob formed when Kay Coles James, President of the Heritage Foundation, was appointed to an AI ethics panel, and they created an external petition from a Medium account called “Googlers Against Transphobia and Hate.”

But don’t worry, these outrage mobs are not opposed to all conservatives. They are only opposed to the “hateful” conservatives. (Read more from “Google’s Outrage Mobs and Witch Hunts” HERE)

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Google Displays Trump-Daughter Photo at the Top Search for ‘Hebephilia’

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By Breitbart. Google displayed a picture of Donald Trump and a young Ivanka Trump at the top of a Google search for “hebephilia” (similar to pedophilia, but attracted to pubescent children). The tech giant removed the picture after a Breitbart News inquiry.

Until Breitbart News made its inquiry earlier this afternoon, searches for the term “hebephilia” displayed a picture of a young Ivanka Trump sitting on her father’s knee during an event. The image appeared in Google’s “snippet,” the featured result that appears above search and is aimed at answering a searcher’s question right away. . .

After Breitbart News brought the search result to Google’s attention, the tech giant said it would remove the image from its snippet.

“Featured snippets are generated automatically to help people easily find pages that our systems determine may have the most relevant information,” said a Google spokeswoman. “In this case, the snippet included an image from another source, which was nonrepresentative of the topic. We are removing the image from this snippet in accordance with our policies for this feature.”

Google has policies that correct inaccurate snippets. However, the company does not have similar policies for organic search results (the ten blue links that appear on each page of search results) or Google Image Search, and the picture of the President and his daughter still appears at the top of Google Image searches for hebephilia. (Read more from “Google Displays Trump-Daughter Photo at the Top Search for ‘Hebephilia'” HERE)

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Trump’s UK visit: President says Britain’s exit from EU would be ‘very good’ for the country

By USA Today. resident Donald Trump predicted Tuesday that Britain would follow through with its plans to leave the European Union and said the exit would be “very good” for the country.

“I think it will happen, and it probably should happen,” Trump said at a news conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May.

May, who is leaving office on Friday after failing to arrange Britain’s exit from the E.U., said she still believes it is in the country’s best interests to leave with an agreement for withdrawal. But she said she would not take Trump’s suggestion and “stick around” so the U.S. and U.K. can negotiate a trade deal once Britain departs the E.U.

“I’m a woman of my word,” she said, emphasizing that she will leave office as planned.

Trump said the United States is committed to negotiating “a phenomenal” trade deal with Britain. (Read more from “Trump’s UK visit: President says Britain’s exit from EU would be ‘very good’ for the country” HERE)

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Top U.S. General Makes Revelation About Google and China’s Relationship

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During his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford said while Google continues to not work with the U.S. military, they will work with China. He said their work with China in turn benefits the Chinese military.

“The work that Google is doing with China is indirectly benefiting the Chinese military and I’ve been very public on this issue as well,” Dunford said. “The way I described it to our industry partners is look we’re the good guys and the values we represent and the system we represent is the one that will allow, and has allowed you, to thrive.”

“We watch with great concern when industry partners work in China, knowing there is that indirect benefit, and frankly ‘indirect’ maybe not a full characterization of the way it really is,” he continued. “It’s more of a direct benefit to the Chinese military.” . . .

Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan also warned about China’s increased spending on its military.

“China’s defense spending approaches that of the U.S., when we take into account purchasing power and the portion of our budget going to military pay and benefits. “That, coupled with China’s organized approach to steal foreign technology, has allowed China to modernize its missile, space, and cyber capabilities, as well as project power far beyond its borders,” he said. (Read more from “Top U.S. General Makes Revelation About Google and China’s Relationship” HERE)

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Whistleblower Exposes Google’s Religious Bias in Labeling Christian Videos ‘Homophobic’

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Whistleblower and Google software engineer Mike Wacker revealed evidence that the human resources department of the giant corporation exhibits bias against Christians, labeling Christian YouTube ads “homophobic.”

Wacker tweeted Wednesday, “Let me give an example related to religion this time, one where HR is involved in describing sincere religious beliefs as ‘homophobic.’” He referred to two videos that LGBT advocates regarded as objectionable, thus complaining to Google, which owns YouTube.

Wacker included in his tweet a video by Christian radio host Dr. Michael Brown “Can You Be Gay and Christian?” and one by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) titled “Barronelle Stutzman’s Story.” Homosexualist objections stemmed from a 2018 story in PinkNews about LGBT activist and author Gaby Dunn, who had asked fans whether they had seen any “anti-LGBT” ads on her YouTube videos. . .

In retaliation for the perceived offense on the part of LGBT advocates, Google ruled that Brown’s video violated its policies for advertisements on its platform. He was barred from paying YouTube to promote his video. Currently, his video does not appear as an advertisement before any other video on YouTube.

Brown explained to LifeSiteNews that YouTube has demonetized his video channel where he has posted 1,600 videos explaining Biblical and Christian teachings on issues ranging from abortion to sexuality. He wrote that there is no appealing YouTube’s decision.

(Read more from “Whistleblower Exposes Google’s Religious Bias in Labeling Christian Videos ‘Homophobic'” HERE)

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Watch: Google CEO Forced to Explain Why Trump’s Photo Appears When You Search for ‘Idiot’

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By Raw Story. Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday found himself having to explain why his company’s search engine retrieves photos of President Donald Trump when a user enters in a search for the word “idiot.” . . .

“We provide search today for any time you type in a keyword… we have gone out and stored copies of billions of pages in our index, and we take the keyword and match it against the pages and rank them based on over 200 signals,” Pichai replied. “Things like relevance, freshness, popularity, how other people are using it. And based on that, you know, at any given time, we try to find the best results for that query.”

(Read more from “Watch: Google Ceo Forced to Explain Why Trump’s Photo Appears When You Search for ‘Idiot'” HERE)

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Google Must Sway Congress on Regulations or Tech Will Face ‘Direct Threat,’ Says Cybersecurity Expert

By CNBC. Google could run into problems with privacy policies if Congress is more receptive to consumer advocates than to the company’s views on regulations, former Facebook privacy and public policy advisor Dipayan Ghosh told CNBC on Tuesday.

“If things do go in that direction, then I think the business model underlying Google, and companies like Google, will be under a more direct threat,” he said on “Closing Bell.”

The comments came after Google CEO Sundar Pichai appeared before a congressional committee, the first time Google parent Alphabet has sent an official to Capitol Hill for a hearing since skipping a Senate hearing on foreign interference in elections earlier this year.

Pichai testified before the House Judiciary Committee, whose members pressed him on a variety of concerns including data privacy, transparency and Google’s development of a censored search engine in China.

Shares of Alphabet had a relatively uneventful day, falling 1.5 percent before climbing to close up nearly 1 percent at $1,061.65. (Read more from “Google Must Sway Congress on Regulations or Tech Will Face ‘Direct Threat,’ Says Cybersecurity Expert” HERE)

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Watch: Jim Jordan Grills Google CEO Over Efforts to Turn out Latino Vote ‘in Key States’

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On Tuesday, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, grilled Google CEO Sundar Pichai over emails from a Google employee discussing an effort by the tech giant to encourage Latinos to vote in the 2016 election.

Jordan read email excerpts from Google’s multicultural marketing head, Eliana Murillo, describing how Google had bolstered efforts to turn out the Latino vote and was “surprised” to find that President Donald Trump won 29 percent of the Latino vote.

Pichai said an internal review found there was no evidence to support the claim that Google had engaged in partisan political activities.

An incredulous Jordan hammered Pichai for denying what the emails indicate in plain English.

Watch:

(For more from the author of “Watch: Jim Jordan Grills Google CEO Over Efforts to Turn out Latino Vote ‘in Key States’” please click HERE)

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Google Employees Debated Burying Conservative Media in Search

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Google employees debated whether to bury conservative media outlets in the company’s search function as a response to President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, internal Google communications obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation reveal. . .

Communications obtained by TheDCNF show that internal Google discussions went beyond expressing remorse over Clinton’s loss to actually discussing ways Google could prevent Trump from winning again.

“This was an election of false equivalencies, and Google, sadly, had a hand in it,” Google engineer Scott Byer wrote in a Nov. 9, 2016, post reviewed by TheDCNF.

Byer falsely labeled The Daily Caller and Breitbart as “opinion blogs” and urged his coworkers to reduce their visibility in search results.

“How many times did you see the Election now card with items from opinion blogs (Breitbart, Daily Caller) elevated next to legitimate news organizations? That’s something that can and should be fixed,” Byer wrote. (Read more from “Google Employees Debated Burying Conservative Media in Search” HERE)

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Google Wants Sensors and Cameras to Watch, Analyze You

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Patents recently issued to Google provide a window into their development activities. While it’s no guarantee of a future product, it is a sure indication of what’s of interest to them. What we’ve given up in privacy to Google, Facebook, and others thus far is minuscule compared to what is coming if these companies get their way.

These patents tell us that Google is developing smart-home products that are capable of eavesdropping on us throughout our home in order to learn more about us and better target us with advertising. It goes much further than the current Google Home speaker that’s promoted to answer our questions and provide useful information, and the Google-owned Nest thermostat that measures environmental conditions in our home. What the patents describe are sensors and cameras mounted in every room to follow us and analyze what we’re doing throughout our home.

They describe how the cameras can even recognize the image of a movie star’s image on a resident’s t-shirt, connect it to the person’s browsing history, and send the person an ad for a new movie the star is in.

One patent, No. 10,114,351, reads, “According to embodiments of this disclosure, a smart-home environment may be provided with smart-device environment policies that use smart-devices to monitor activities within a smart-device environment, report on these activities, and/or provide smart-device control based upon these activities.” . . .

When Amazon first introduced their Alexa speaker, and Google followed with their own speaker, security experts warned that these devices could be turned around to spy on us, and that’s exactly what appears to be happening. While there are many good uses for adding sensors for home automation, the danger comes when they are being monitored and used by outside companies with an insatiable desire to know everything about us. (Read more from “Google Wants Sensors and Cameras to Watch, Analyze You” HERE)

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Google Turns Evil in Willingness to Collude With China’s Repression

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By The Federalist. Google, a company with an annual revenue exceeding $100 billion and tens of thousands of employees, has brought about ground-breaking innovations through its horizontal search engine, self-driving vehicles, and electronic messaging systems, improving the lives of millions of individuals and businesses in the process.

However, recent reports of the Silicon Valley behemoth’s cooperation with China paint a picture less of an ethical business giant, and more of an adversary blatantly subverting American interests and basic human rights on the world stage.

In early August, The Intercept reported that Google is planning to implement a censored version of its search engine in China, dubbed “Project Dragonfly,” which will block searches related to free speech, human rights, and democracy, among other content Beijing deems objectionable.

Worse, the search engine will reportedly link any searches entered by a user directly to his or her phone number, allowing Chinese authorities to easily track citizens seeking out blacklisted information, and placing political dissidents at risk of human rights violations such as interrogation or detention. . .

By yielding to Beijing’s assault on freedom in return for access to new markets, Google has succumbed to the darker impulses of human nature, in a stark reversal of previous anti-censorship stances. In 2010, for instance, Google refused to censor search results in China, writing in a blog post, “We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services.” (Read more from “Google Turns Evil in Willingness to Collude With China’s Repression” HERE)

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Google’s Nest Reportedly Went to Great Lengths to Hide Its Health Ambitions When It Acquired a Seattle Start-Up Last Summer

By CNBC. Google-owned Nest went to great lengths to conceal its acquisition of Seattle health monitoring start-up Senosis in order to keep its interest in digital health a secret, new records obtained by GeekWire show.

While GeekWire had previously reported that Google had bought the start-up in the summer of 2017, the records confirm that it was actually Alphabet’s home automation business Nest that wished to integrate Senosis’s technology. However, the company told those involved in the deal that they couldn’t mention Nest or publicize the sale.

“It turns out Nest is much more secretive than the rest of Google or Alphabet,” Senosis co-founder Shwetak Patel wrote to the vice president of University of Washington’s innovation hub in June 2017. “They seem to be particularly sensitive in this situation since they don’t want people to know they are getting into a whole new line of business, digital health, until they are ready to publicly announce.”

Senosis Health spun out of the University of Washington, which enabled GeekWire to make public records requests related to its sale.

Emails also show that Google’s corporate counsel instructed the team to use “Google” instead of “Nest” on outside forms and in internal discussions to prevent speculation around a Nest health product. (Read more from “Google’s Nest Reportedly Went to Great Lengths to Hide Its Health Ambitions When It Acquired a Seattle Start-Up Last Summer” HERE)

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