I seem to be on a bit of an anti-Google thing at the moment, a lot of this is because of what I consider to be their somewhat questionable attitudes towards their employees. It’s odd to see how similar they are becoming to The Church of Scientology these days and as a little experiment, I decided to chat to a Googleologist I hadn’t talked to for ages (names changed, to protect the brainwashed). Here’s how it went:

Michael: How are things?
Thetan: tiring
Michael: Whyso
Thetan: work
Michael: Aaah, evil Google.
Michael: Or have you left.
Thetan: no.
Michael: Escape! Escape!
Thetan: why would I want to do that?
Thetan: the money is great, the company is good, we’re doing good stuff, we have hte biggest supercomputer in the world, the most brilliant engineers, and we’re not making weapons or being a drug company
Michael: Ah well differences of opinion about google aside, good to see you ok 🙂
Thetan: well, if you think that google’s anything other than an ad company with a sideline in search, you’re more of an idiot than I thought you were
Michael: I remember why I stopped talking to you now… You make your own world view and stick it on someone without any regard to asking someone what their real opinion is.
Michael: ah well, tara.
Thetan: whatever
Thetan: actually you stopped talking to me because I stopped replying
Thetan: hth
Thetan: hand
Michael: Erm, as I said own world view, you were the last person to speak in the previous scrollback.
Thetan has signed off.

Now I am not reading this wrong, am I? Did I ever say I thought Google was an advertising company with a sideline in search engines? Did I even criticise Google except in a slightly jokey way? I don’t think I did and this person wasn’t aware of my previous weblog writings against Google. I actually like Google search engine, it’s great when Firefox along with Noscript and Customizegoogle remove all the crap from it. My objection to Google is that that everything apart from their search engine is just mediocre garbage which simply by existing seems to stifle other things. In fact, it’s much the same objection that most people who turn into Googleologists probably used to have about other companies before they started their regular Auditing.

This is the just part of the problem. To them, there can be no criticism of Google; ever! If you dare to do so, you will be told what an idiot you are. They also ignore everything you said and make up their own reasons you have problems with Google, reasons that are easy to prove wrong. See, look above, it happened just as predicted it would and that wasn’t a setup, I think I was being perfectly friendly there.

Their employment system is interesting. They make any new employee feel like they are the most important person ever and that they personally were specially selected from everybody in the world because they were the best there is anywhere for the job that they do. Then they keep them pretty much detached from the outside world; mostly by working them every hour of the day. They don’t force them to do it but they are on a campus, so they can’t really socialise outside Google and being the most important person there, they can hardly relax, or they may upset their peers and managers. The company has its own internal language, its own ranking structures, its own inter-group rivalry and its own internal impression that the Google way is the only way and anyone who opposes that is just an idiot. Sometimes when I have to talk to one of them, I start to wonder if there is a specially converted large ship travelling around to house the Google Sea Org. (*)

The fact that they pay them so much means it loses some points on the “How to identify a cult” chart but as people may well point out, it’s not like they have much chance to enjoy their money.

Anyway, it amused me and another friend of mine has just been approached by Google. I will just hope they see sense before they are assimilated. Oh and in case you think there is some case of sour grapes here, I have been approached by Google for a job – In fact, I think I would have been the log-person’s bosses bosses boss or something and would’ve been paid shedloads of money for the pleasure. I didn’t take the job as you probably guessed.