How Google spent 15 years creating a culture of concealment
Yahoo and confronted lawsuits involving patent, trademark and copyright claims, its executives sent out a confidential memo.
«We believe that information is good,» the executives told employees in the memo. But, they added, government regulators or competitors might seize on words that Google workers casually, thoughtlessly, wrote to one another. To minimise the odds that a lawsuit could flush out comments that might be incriminating, Google said, employees should refrain from speculation and sarcasm and «think twice» before writing to one another about «hot topics».
The technology was tweaked, too. The setting for the company's instant messaging tool was changed to «off the record». An incautious phrase would be wiped the next day.
The memo became the first salvo in a 15-year campaign by Google to make deletion the default in its internal communications. Even as the internet giant stored the world's information, it created an office culture that tried to minimise its own.
Among its tools: using legal privilege as an all-purpose shield and imposing restraints on its own technology, all while continually warning that loose lips could sink even the most successful corporation.
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