The Google Disclaimer

The Required Disclaimer

I work for Google. Google would like me to write “The opinions stated here are my own, not necessarily those of my employer” when I write things like this. It is now written, and I mean every word of that.

It is kind of ridiculous though. I mean, here I am, in an article I am writing complaining about the disclaimer that my employer wants me to use, required to point out that this complaint is not necessarily the opinion of Google.

The Problem

Every time I get to the disclaimer portion of an article I am writing, I get stuck. Sometimes I spend more time on the disclaimer than I do on the article, trying to write something which keeps me employed but also lets me feel like a human being with free will. I am trying to capture all that angst here, so the next time I have to write the disclaimer, I can just link here.

Why can’t people just assume that I actually have no idea what opinions Google has. I could promise to say “Google has an opinion on this and I have been authorized to express it here” in the very unlikely case where I actually wanted to say something on the behalf of Google. Apparently that isn’t how the world works. This bothers me, a lot.

I mean, seriously, does that sentence even make any sense. Does “Google” have an opinion? People have opinions. Companies are just machines made out of people which turn human lives into capital. The only opinion a company could have is something like “Yum these human lives are tasty and look at all the capital” and is definitely not my opinion on that subject.

But I suppose another opinion that a hypothetical company might have is “It seems better to restrict speech for employees than to be sued for things that the employees say” because then there would be less yummy capital. So among the other exchanges a person might have to do when entering into an employment contract, one might be to write a sentence like “The opinions stated here are my own, not necessarily those of my employer.” If someone were required to add that to statements they made, they would, in some way, actually be expressing an opinion of their employer in a roundabout way and thus contradicting themselves when they claimed that they weren’t.

The Real Disclaimer

I am a human being and I have many opinions, some of which, if they were perceived to be official statements by the company which employs me, would be a problem for the company that employs me. If you are the kind of person who looks for those statements because you want to be a problem for the company that employees me, please be advised that this document contains the magic phrase “The opinions stated here are my own, not necessarily those of my employer.” and you probably aren’t going to be able to use this writing in your attempt to cause problems.

Did I mention that the opinions stated here are my own, not necessarily those of my employer, because the opinions stated here are my own, not necessarily those of my employer.

I certainly would not want you thinking that the opinions stated here are those of my employer, because that would be wrong. I apologize if anything I have said gave you that impression. If I gave you that impression, that was a mistake.

I also don’t want you thinking that I have the same opinions as my employer. The opinions that my employer has, which, as I have pointed out, are not stated here, are not my own. In case you were wondering.