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posted by martyb on Saturday September 02 2017, @02:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-be-evil dept.

Following a controversy over Google's Eric Schmidt pressuring the New America Foundation into removing a critical blog post and firing the scholar who wrote it, a former Forbes journalist now working at Gizmodo has written about an incident in which Google allegedly pressured Forbes to kill a negative story:

The incident occurred in 2011. Hill was a cub reporter at Forbes, where she covered technology and privacy. At the time, Google was actively promoting Google Plus and was sending representatives to media organizations to encourage them to add "+1" buttons to their sites. Hill was pulled into one of these meetings, where the Google representative suggested that Forbes would be penalized in Google search results if it didn't add +1 buttons to the site.

Hill thought that seemed like a big story, so she contacted Google's PR shop for confirmation. Google essentially confirmed the story, and so Hill ran with it under the headline: "Stick Google Plus Buttons On Your Pages, Or Your Search Traffic Suffers."

Hill described what happened next:

Google never challenged the accuracy of the reporting. Instead, a Google spokesperson told me that I needed to unpublish the story because the meeting had been confidential, and the information discussed there had been subject to a non-disclosure agreement between Google and Forbes. (I had signed no such agreement, hadn't been told the meeting was confidential, and had identified myself as a journalist.)

It escalated quickly from there. I was told by my higher-ups at Forbes that Google representatives called them saying that the article was problematic and had to come down. The implication was that it might have consequences for Forbes, a troubling possibility given how much traffic came through Google searches and Google News.

If true, does it reflect worse on Google or the clickbait and scriptwall outlet Forbes?


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by slap on Saturday September 02 2017, @02:58PM (11 children)

    by slap (5764) on Saturday September 02 2017, @02:58PM (#562935)

    Hill violated a NDA between Google and Forbes.

    "The implication was that it might have consequences for Forbes"

    Yep - you violate a NDA and you will not be invited back for other NDA-type presentations. Pretty common throughout business.

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:41PM (2 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:41PM (#562944) Journal

    And no one is ever unfairly pressured into agreeing to an NDA. Employers never abuse their power to strongarm candidates into accepting unconscionable and even illegal restrictions on their rights and freedoms.

    Sign, or starve.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by unauthorized on Saturday September 02 2017, @04:06PM (1 child)

      by unauthorized (3776) on Saturday September 02 2017, @04:06PM (#562953)

      In that case, Forbes should have fought in court to get the NDA repelled instead of blatantly ignoring the legally binding agreement they allegedly entered. You don't get a free pass on violating contracts by screaming "injustice" loud enough.

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @07:41PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @07:41PM (#562993)

        Some contracts should not even be enforceable, such as NDAs. I have no problem with people violating them.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Snotnose on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:45PM (4 children)

    by Snotnose (1623) on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:45PM (#562948)

    Hill violated a NDA between Google and Forbes.

    If you RTFA you'll see she never signed an NDA.

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Whoever on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:51PM (3 children)

      by Whoever (4524) on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:51PM (#562950) Journal

      As an employee of Forbes, she would have been covered by the NDA between Google and Forbes.

      • (Score: 2) by tekk on Saturday September 02 2017, @04:39PM (2 children)

        by tekk (5704) Subscriber Badge on Saturday September 02 2017, @04:39PM (#562960)

        This would be Forbes' problem though, not Hill's, wouldn't it? If my employer enters into an NDA with another company and I'm not informed of such an NDA, then no reasonable court would hold me to it (not that every court is reasonable.)

        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Whoever on Saturday September 02 2017, @05:23PM (1 child)

          by Whoever (4524) on Saturday September 02 2017, @05:23PM (#562970) Journal

          Yes, it would be Forbes' problem. It would also explain Forbes taking down the article and it would not be Google misusing their power, just a screwup by Forbes.

          It sounds like an example where Hanlon's razor should be applied.

          • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @09:21PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @09:21PM (#563023)

            it would not be Google misusing their power

            First they misused their power by pressuring media to add G+ buttons to their pages. Then they misused their power by telling Forbes to take down the story. The second thing at least was legal. But it was still evil.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Whoever on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:49PM (2 children)

    by Whoever (4524) on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:49PM (#562949) Journal

    I was going to post that Hill clearly doesn't understand how NDAs work, but in this case, I am not so sure it's that simple.

    Almost every NDA requires the disclosing party to identify material that is confidential. So, someone should have told her that the content of the meeting was confidential. Now it's possible that Google told Forbes that everything to be discussed at the meeting would be confidential and Forbes did not pass this information on. If this is what happened, it's a non-story.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @05:10PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @05:10PM (#562968)

      "If this is what happened, it's a non-story."

      But, what if the NDA was covered by another NDA that prevented Forbes telling it's reporters that it had signed an NDA?

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Saturday September 02 2017, @08:37PM

      by Hyperturtle (2824) on Saturday September 02 2017, @08:37PM (#563007)

      I thought the story was that the believed that Google was acting in terribly bad faith and abusing its monopolistic position. The NDA is just a weasely argument at this point. The NDA is indeed a non-story.

      The NDA question is not what anyone worried about Google's behavior nor Forbes behavior was concerned with -- she didn't write a story about the NDA and how stifling they are to the freedom of expression. No, whe wrote about google being evil and their saying that's a nice revenue stream you have, it'd be a shame is traffic stopped coming here so often, while two goons in the background talk about how horrible it would be if someone busted a kneecap for some reason.

      It doesn't matter if the goons were under an NDA. What the goons are insinuating, and what their employer is directly suggesting, are not exactly on the "do no evil" list of suggestions Google used to abide with.

      She was writing about such lack of goodness. This whole NDA discussion is seperate. I won't get into if an NDA that keeps illegal activities quiet by censoring the activities described is something that can turn out to be legally enforcable to gag like they did, but the goons don't care much about the law anyway.