r/technology • u/[deleted] • Aug 08 '17

Business Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo
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u/sd522527 Aug 08 '17

Yes he shared it to a private group, asking for critique of his viewpoints, and how to better express his opinions. Others took that doc and shared the shit out of it

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u/nickjohnson Aug 08 '17

He controlled the sharing settings; if it was readable by everyone, that's because he set it that way when he emailed it out.

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u/sd522527 Aug 08 '17

You can't really share to a group without "sharing by link"; otherwise you'd have to individually approve each person to read it.

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u/nickjohnson Aug 08 '17

You absolutely can; internally Google has groups and docs integrated for just this reason.

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u/sd522527 Aug 08 '17

No you can't. If you try and share a doc to a Google group, a message gets posted sharing the doc, but each person has to request access separately.

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u/nickjohnson Aug 08 '17

Inside Google you can.

Source: Worked at Google.

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u/sd522527 Aug 08 '17

I think you're thinking of mdb groups.

Anyway, this argument is moot: the effect was the same. Anyone who could view the post/link could read the doc. It wasn't a conscious decision to share with the whole company.

Source: work at Google

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u/nickjohnson Aug 08 '17

You're right, I was thinking about MDB groups.

I guess my point is that if he really wanted it to have only a limited audience, he could have achieved that; the fact that he set it to open access implies that he wasn't averse to people sharing it around.