Summary of the book "Google Leaks" - By Zach Vorhies

Key Concepts in this book:

1. The election of Donald Trump was a watershed moment in Google's political history.
2. Google's anti-fake news initiative, according to Vorhies, is a disguised kind of censorship.
3. To make the internet more "fair," Google wanted to restructure it.
4. Trump was made to appear particularly awful by Google's response to the "covfefe" scandal.
5. Vorhies blew the whistle after discovering "blacklists."
6. The issue worsened when Google took action against Vorhies, but eventually, the word got out.

Who can benefit the most from this book:

• Tech lovers concerned by the the growth of online megacorporations.
• Political aficionados interested in the years of Trump’s presidency.
• Free-speech advocates concerned by the erosion of civil liberties

What am I getting out of it? Hear a Google whistleblower's story.

Many of us associate using the internet with using Google. Googling something is the same thing as searching for it. Viewing a video necessitates the use of YouTube, a Google company. In addition, emails are frequently sent to or from Gmail accounts – or both.

But, really, how much do we know about this company? In actuality, not much. That, according to Zach Vorhies, is an issue. He claims, as a former Google employee, that the business has been secretly attempting to influence politics since Donald Trump's election.

This summary follows Vorhies from his days as a Google employee to his time as a whistleblower who made damning accusations against his former employers.

• You'll learn how Google reacted to Donald Trump's election. 
• Why does the word "covfefe" throw Google employees into a frenzy.
• And why the author was visited by a squad of heavily armed police officers in this summary.

1. The election of Donald Trump was a watershed moment in Google's political history.

When Zach Vorhies arrived at the Google offices in San Bruno, California, one morning in November 2016, he couldn't believe his eyes. Donald Trump had been elected president of the United States the night before, and everyone at Google seemed to be going insane.

As though a close member had died, some were crying and talking. Others had decided to take the day off entirely.

According to Vorhies, these folks lacked a basic understanding of civics. The United States holds elections regularly as a democracy. You give it you're all to win, but if you don't, you accept it in stride and resolve to do better next time.

But that didn't appear to be the case at Google.

The main message here is that Donald Trump's win constituted a watershed moment in Google's political history.

Vorhies overheard employees complaining about how unjust the election was and urging that resistance was required to defeat Trump everywhere he went. At first, it appeared to be idle banter – until staff were told to tune in to a weekly meeting broadcast live from Google's Mountain View headquarters.

The mood was ominous from the start. An unusual Google hat, a bright striped beanie with a small propeller on top, is worn by many employees. Normally, it appears to be innocent – even amusing. However, as Vorhies surveyed row after row of employees, all of whom wore the same hat and appeared to be united in their political aspirations, the uniformity struck him as menacing.

Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google and CEO of its parent firm Alphabet, called Trump's win "very insulting" during the aired meeting, while Kent Walker, the company's Vice President for Global Affairs, blamed Trump's triumph on bigotry and hatred. Employees were encouraged to console one another with hugs by Ruth Porat, the Chief Financial Officer.

A Google employee later inquired about what the company might do to combat the misinformation and fake news that had allegedly contributed to Trump's election. Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, responded.

What Pichai stated was both ambiguous and disturbing to Vorhies. This, according to Pichai, is an opportunity to further machine learning and artificial intelligence. Until those procedures had been utilized to deal with issues such as bullying and nasty remarks. Machine learning and AI, on the other hand, would be utilized to do much more once they were scaled up.

And, for the first time, Vorhies had a sense of what Google was planning.

2. Google's anti-fake news initiative, according to Vorhies, is a disguised kind of censorship.

Vorhies grew up feeling that free speech was an essential component of any democracy worth the name. He'd built his beliefs his entire life by gathering information from a variety of sources spanning the political spectrum.

In fact, he was frequently convinced by new arguments and evidence that he hadn't examined before. That was the allure of freedom of expression.

However, in Vorhies' opinion, Google had targeted that method of operation. They were not in favour of the free and open debate. The correct opinions were predetermined for Google, according to Vorhies, and it was their responsibility to gently move you toward them — search by search.

Here's the main point: Google's anti-fake news initiative, according to Vorhies, is a disguised kind of censorship.

For Vorhies, Google was embarking on a campaign against "fake news" to limit the material and arguments available to the general public. To put it another way, their proposals sounded suspiciously like censorship.

Vorhies, on the other hand, had only a hazy concept of what the company planned to do at this stage. So he started digging.

Conveniently, Google was an "open" organization, meaning that the majority of its internal documents were accessible to all employees. Vorhies merely googled "fake news," and the first paper that came up gave him a clear picture of what they were planning.

The report opened with five examples of fake news, four of which were disparaging of Hillary Clinton and one of which was supportive of Trump.

Furthermore, the author believes that some of the stories branded "fake news" were not necessarily so. "Wikileaks CONFIRMS Hillary Sold Weapons to ISIS," read one headline. According to Vorhies, the validity of that assertion is unclear. However, he claims that some news stories appear to link Clinton's foreign policy actions to the equipping of hostile militants.

Google's examples of fake news appeared to Vorhies to exhibit an obvious pattern. These stories were all pro-Trump and anti-Hillary Clinton. The options didn't appear to be unbiased or apolitical.

Because Vorhies is an engineer, he recognized that determining the difference between fake and true news would have to be an automatic process rather than a manual one. So Vorhies' next thought was to figure out how this new system would work.

3. To make the internet more "fair," Google wanted to restructure it.

Vorhies came uncovered a document detailing the system Google planned to use to filter its results in the early months of Trump's presidency. They'd cleverly given it a name that any respectable person would understand.

It was dubbed "machine learning fairness" by the researchers. But what exactly did that imply?

When algorithms are fed real-world data – such as human decisions – they learn to make decisions for themselves based on the patterns they discover. But what about justice? Google defined fair machine learning as a system that could learn from humans while ignoring human preconceptions and biases.

This may appear to be uncontroversial, but it isn't.

The main point is that Google intended to change the internet to make it more "fair."

Vorhies learnt more as he continued reading the paper. Algorithmic unfairness was a related idea that went hand in hand with machine learning fairness, and this was what machine learning fairness was supposed to prevent.

The following is an excerpt from the document Vorhies was reading: If a search for "CEOs" yielded more images of men than women, this would be considered algorithmic unfairness, as such results would be biased against women.

Vorhies started to feel uneasy. What if the number of male CEOs outnumbers the number of female CEOs? Isn't it "algorithmically unjust" to reflect the facts?

According to the document, Google does not necessarily believe this. True justice sometimes entails portraying things as they should be rather than as they are. To put it another way, even outcomes that paint a true image of the world might be algorithmically unjust. For example, showing predominantly male CEOs will perpetuate negative assumptions about leadership and gender roles.

Google appeared to believe that helping society become more fair and equal is sometimes more essential than simply reporting reality.

But what about the websites that disagreed with this worldview? Perhaps they will just be demoted in the ranks, or their capacity to make advertising revenue will be taken away.

According to the documents released by Vorhies, Google intended to create a team of evaluators who would work alongside AI to rate the trustworthiness of various websites. Would this, however, be a fair and balanced procedure? Vorhies wasn't convinced for a second; he felt that websites with which Google agreed would be elevated, while those with which it disagreed would be demoted.

This appeared to Vorhies to be a formidable initiative with the potential to radically influence American politics. And he was concerned about it.

4. Trump was made to appear particularly awful by Google's response to the "covfefe" scandal.

On May 31, 2017, just after midnight, Donald Trump tweeted a six-word phrase that went viral faster than anyone could have predicted: "Despite the continuous bad press covfefe."

“Covfefe”? The world was perplexed — what could it possibly mean? When reporters questioned Trump's press secretary, Sean Spicer, he simply added to the confusion. He claimed that only the president and "a tiny handful of people" understood what he was talking about. Did they, however, succeed? Did they truly say that?

Trump's tweet could be understood very quickly according to Google. The company's translation service recognized "covfefe" as an Arabic word that means "we will stand up," according to Vorhies and others. "We will stand up despite the relentless negative news," said the group. It made a lot of sense to Vorhies, so Google must have been pleased, right? Wrong.

The main point is that Google's reaction to the "covfefe" scandal made Trump appear particularly awful.

The New York Times was the first to criticize Google's translation of "covfefe." The day following Trump's tweet, a New York Times journalist called Liam Slack debunked the notion that the president had chosen an Arabic phrase on purpose.

For one thing, according to Slack's report, Trump allegedly promised to stop Muslims from entering the country. He'd also never claimed to speak Arabic in public. Finally, an Arabic academic went on record to say that the word "covfefe" had no meaning.

That was the indication Google was looking for. By looking at the company's internal documentation, Vorhies was able to put together what had happened yet again.

Employees at Google decided to modify the system's initial translation while also playing a joke on the president. The term "covfefe" will no longer be interpreted as "we will stand up." Instead, when you type that term into Google Translate, you'll see an emoji of a man shrugging his shoulders, as if perplexed.

It was as simple as that. With a few mouse clicks from several Google employees, the word "covfefe" was no longer classified as Arabic – and Trump's tweet was rendered meaningless.

It wasn't the most serious or worrisome thing Google did, but it was telling in Vorhies' opinion. The company's speed and readiness to act were both impressive and disturbing in equal measure.

5. Vorhies blew the whistle after discovering "blacklists."

One issue was the covfefe situation. The turning point for Vorhies occurred when he learned that Google had several "blacklists" — a list of phrases and websites that he suspected the search engine was seeking to suppress.

At the time, the corporation was claiming that political concerns had no bearing on their search results. However, a cursory scan of Google's internal servers brought up several documents with the term "blacklist" in the title - and it appeared that conservative media was being singled out in these documents.

Popular right-wing websites such as True Pundit, Louder with Crowder, and GlennBeck.com were included on a list that Vorhies suspected was intended to keep content out of Google Now newsfeeds. This was a watershed moment for him: he had to go public now.

Here's the main point: Vorhies blew the whistle after discovering "blacklists."

Vorhies contacted Project Veritas, a right-wing investigative journalism outfit that specialized in dramatic political exposés, after making a few inquiries.

Vorhies spoke with a Project Veritas staffer and went into great detail about how he believed Google was systematically blocking conservative information. It was a big relief to speak with the reporter, but to his disappointment, nothing came of his claims: no investigations, no news coverage, and not even a single tweet. The organization sat on the material for months.

In the meantime, Vorhies made the decision that he could no longer work for Google. He believed the corporation had transgressed its basic credo, "Don't be evil." Vorhies quit Google for good, disillusioned by his work and Project Veritas' inaction.

Then, out of nowhere, the scene shifted. A Google executive was secretly recorded by Project Veritas, saying that smaller digital businesses lacked the means to "avoid another Trump issue." Was that Google's vision of its mission? The recording seemed to validate all of Vorhies' assumptions, and Project Veritas agreed.

An anonymous interview with Vorhies was included in the group's study on suspected political prejudice at Google. His revelations were finally bearing fruit.

6. The issue worsened when Google took action against Vorhies, but eventually, the word got out.

Vorhies was the one who had done it. He'd finally been able to share his discoveries with the rest of the world, despite his reservations for years. It was a weight lifted from his shoulders, but in a strange sense, his admission simply added to his worries.

Even though Vorhies had kept anonymous in his Project Veritas interview, he was well aware that Google could quickly find his identity. The corporation would keep digital logs of who accessed and stored the internal documents he had obtained, and it wouldn't take them long to link the connections.

So it came as no surprise to Vorhies when he received a cease-and-desist letter from Google shortly after the exposé was published.

The main point is that when Google took action against Vorhies, the situation became tenser — but eventually, word got out.

The letter from Google didn't only ask Vorhies to cease distributing confidential information. It also asked that he hand over his corporate laptop, which included all of the documents on which his dubious allegations were founded.

However, Vorhies believed that the materials he had acquired should be made public. Instead of returning his laptop as required in Google's letter, he gave it to the US Department of Justice, along with 950 pages of internal records. He also contacted a contact at Project Veritas, asking him to publish the documents public in the event of Vorhies' own "untimely death" - an arrangement he shared with the rest of the world via Twitter.

Paranoid? Maybe, but Vorhies went through a horrible incident not long after. In August of 2019, Google called the San Francisco police and asked them to do a "wellness check" on their former employee, which he believes was an intimidation technique.

The scene became tense when Vorhies refused to meet with the cops. His apartment was surrounded by police officers with guns drawn and was being watched over by a helicopter. At his front gate, there was even a bomb-disposal robot. Vorhies eventually gave in and walked away uninjured from the incident.

With Google already knowing who he was, he decided to drop the façade of anonymity totally. So he did another Project Veritas interview, this time under his own name. Furthermore, the organization made the 950-page materials he had obtained public.

Project Veritas published the second interview about a week after the police encounter. This time, it's with Zach Vorhies, a former Google employee, rather than an anonymous whistleblower.

As a Google employee, Zach Vorhies was worried by the company's slow trend into political affiliation and willful repression. Following Donald Trump's election, he became increasingly disillusioned with the political path taken by the tech giant — a campaign he claimed included "blacklists," AI, and the dismissing of criticism as "fake news." When it became too much for him, Vorhies went public with his claims, revealing internal Google papers.