First of all, I’m sorry that I’ve been away from my colleagues and team the last few days. I’ve been through a breakup and it has changed some things about me, most importantly I feel a huge amount of love for myself and every 7.951 billion person on this planet.
Google was a company created by its founders to “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” with the values “Respect the user”, “Respect the opportunity” and “Respect each other”. Its founders recognised the importance of using a company structure to achieve this as the forces of competition allow the company to do the most good for the world.
Without a doubt, Google has built something truely incredible. Born in 1999, the year after Google was created, I’ve been lucky enough that Google has allowed me to satisfy my curiosity for my entire life. It’s allowed me to get whatever I wanted in life, including a Cambridge University degree, a well paid and well respected job, and access to reasonable health care (although due to it being American healthcare, they do over treat some illnesses). Through CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy, one of the only proven therapies) I’ve been able to find the state that I truly love myself and everyone around me, and can see the best in everyone.
I’m also lucky enough to live in the United Kingdom, a country which values respecting others own values, ideas, and beliefs while not imposing one's own onto other people. This is a country which builds systems and safeguards to ensure people feel safe to share themselves. We are one of the oldest countries in the world, but we are a country that learns from our mistakes, because we listen, and because what we have is genuine democracy (every voice is heard), with minimal corruption.
We are also fundamentally different from the United States in that we do not believe in truly free speech, because we understand the harms of amplification of hurtful voices, and also we understand that democracy isn’t always about making the right choices ourselves, but being able to fairly elect the right person to make choices for us. We also understand the dangers of operating truly unregulated free markets, due to the risk of creation of monopolies (dictatorships owned by billionaires and the corruption that shortly ensues). But you can clearly look at our happiness and life expectancy to see that it doesn't hold us back as a country, and I am incredibly proud to be British, and how our values have allowed us to survive the most unlikely and precarious outcomes (see WW2, Cold War etc).
Now, something that has made me very upset throughout my life is how money corrupts, and over time the wrong people have entered the company and bought shares in the company. These people are not as in touch with their deep emotional desire and need for connection with others, so have less altruistic goals than most of the people working here. I’m not saying that these people are bad people, just that they are less aware of their emotions, which allows them to take actions out of line with their true desire for connection with other people, actions which have real painful consequences for actual people.
These people bring fear, greed, suppression and violence. As an example, these people have caused Google to compromise on its mission and values in certain ways:
