Google

UPDATE: According to Kara Swisher at Recode, Google has fired James Damore, the author of the memo that is the topic of this article. On Friday, August 4, 2017, several Google employees took to Twitter to discuss a ten-page document that was circulating internally at an alarming rate. The manifesto focused on the topic of “ideological diversity” replacing Google’s current diversity policies. The author states, “Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things....

If you have not heard the news, Google Fiber is no longer expanding its installation in the 10 markets they service and the head of Google Access (the Google Fiber overlord company), Craig Barratt, is stepping down. Also in the news, was a little-publicized statement from AT&T’s chief executive, Randall Stephenson, where he said, “I will be sorely disappointed if we are not going head-to-head” with cable companies by 2021....

Good news for the Unifour area of North Carolina (where I lived three years of my early adult life), Google is building a 210 job, $600 million dollar datacenter to help bolster its online offerings. Google Taps North Carolina for New Datacenter Site (E-Commerce Times): Google plans to build a new, US$600 million datacenter in North Carolina designed to help support its online operations, the company announced Friday. The site, to be located in the city of Lenoir, is expected to create about 210 jobs over time....

orkut.com is a social networking service developed in association with Google. Why the name Orkut? Orkut Büyükkökten, a Google employee that has a significant interest in social networking, developed the service. How did Mr. Orkut have time to develop such a project? Google has a creativity policy of sorts that encourages its employees to use 20% of their time for personal interests. Google has officially stated that orkut.com is not part of their service offerings (yet) but the fact that the phrase, “in affiliation with Google” appears on every page leads one to believe that this social networking service isn’t going to spin-off into a non-Google entity any time soon....