Google Stands Againt War

Politics and business do not mix well.  I know there are a lot of people who believe they can have a say in how products are used after they are sold to a client.  That is not true.   Once it is sold, there is very little anyone can do to influence how that product is used.  Google has tried to break new ground and the wrong time, right when the Federal government is trying to decide what cloud provider it is going to use.  This is a billion dollar business deal that will be undone by a smaller project stopped on principle.  Today the news stories can applaud Google, but while I do favor them most of the time, on this I don’t.  I doubt that the majority of Google employees are going to be happy with a decision that hurts their bottom line more than they can imagine.

This whole thing is over  Project Maven, which is supposed to help drones find and follow their targets better, using artificial intelligence.  The Feds do not need Google to do that, but apparently found something useful in the way Google did it.  Somebody in Google must have thought they were indispensable in this process, but drones have been finding and tracking targets for as long as there were drones with missiles mounted on them.  Some people at Google have big heads to believe that Google can change that by cutting off their noses to spite themselves.  That is not good business.

Aside from that, very few of us who actually did this kind of work would say that the goal of counter-terror operations was evil.  And, it isn’t war either.  Terrorists are people who come to your neighborhood and plant bombs on innocent children and blow people up for their political beliefs.  They would certainly bomb Google if they could.

The Feds are not going to go deaf between now and the time the bigger contract is let for cloud services, especially when Amazon has the inside track on that already.  Google was fighting an uphill battle that is made more difficult by their own actions against a major player in the cloud decision.  If I were sitting on judgement of the various bids, I certainly would take into account that Google wants to have a say in how their services are used once they are sold to a client.  I want those cloud services to do what they are supposed to do, not what Google thinks is politically acceptable.