Note that this is not an official Google project, but was done by a Google employee in his “20%” time. I would be wary of interpreting this as Google endorsing Bitcoin, or as implying that Google would defend Bitcoin if it were subjected to legal scrutiny.
Right, that has a lot to do with why I mentioned its unofficial status in the first clause. The point is that they could have left this unaffiliated with Google altogether, but at least chose some level of association, which helps to get Bitcoin good press.
Google Code is a public open-source project hosting service. Anyone can use it, and if a Google employee is going to release code and has no particular preference, surely they would use Google’s own hosting.
Oops, didn’t know that. Still, Google had to decide to let it be known that this was one of their employees being paid to do it, when they could have chosen not to be associated in this way.
A company’s employees publishing open-source projects is, in general, good publicity. Choosing to be not associated would consist of them telling said employee not to use their @google.com account for publishing this project (unless there’s some other active publication of ‘this is by a Google employee’ that I don’t know about), and why would they bother doing that unless they thought this particular project would be bad publicity?
(Disclosure: I have been (and will be) a Google intern, which probably affects my priors here, but I do not believe this argument is dependent on non-public information.)
It’s not that Google allowed someone to potentially see the connection to Google, but that Google ensured that they (Google) would be associated with the project by informing the media. The story doesn’t say “omg through investigative reporting we found that Google paid for the creation of a bitcoin client” (remember, the 20% time is not “whatever you want”, but projects approved by management).
Ah, after chasing down the original announcement, I see that it does contain the phrase “Google is pleased to announce the release of BitCoinJ, …”. Still, that is a message from the original author of the software; it is neither a press release nor written by a different party at Google, which I would expect to see if Google was actually promoting or considering using Bitcoin or BitCoinJ.
Note that this is not an official Google project, but was done by a Google employee in his “20%” time. I would be wary of interpreting this as Google endorsing Bitcoin, or as implying that Google would defend Bitcoin if it were subjected to legal scrutiny.
Right, that has a lot to do with why I mentioned its unofficial status in the first clause. The point is that they could have left this unaffiliated with Google altogether, but at least chose some level of association, which helps to get Bitcoin good press.
What facts indicate “some level of association”?
Well, for one:
code.google.com/p/bitcoinj/
Google Code is a public open-source project hosting service. Anyone can use it, and if a Google employee is going to release code and has no particular preference, surely they would use Google’s own hosting.
Oops, didn’t know that. Still, Google had to decide to let it be known that this was one of their employees being paid to do it, when they could have chosen not to be associated in this way.
A company’s employees publishing open-source projects is, in general, good publicity. Choosing to be not associated would consist of them telling said employee not to use their @google.com account for publishing this project (unless there’s some other active publication of ‘this is by a Google employee’ that I don’t know about), and why would they bother doing that unless they thought this particular project would be bad publicity?
(Disclosure: I have been (and will be) a Google intern, which probably affects my priors here, but I do not believe this argument is dependent on non-public information.)
It’s not that Google allowed someone to potentially see the connection to Google, but that Google ensured that they (Google) would be associated with the project by informing the media. The story doesn’t say “omg through investigative reporting we found that Google paid for the creation of a bitcoin client” (remember, the 20% time is not “whatever you want”, but projects approved by management).
Ah, after chasing down the original announcement, I see that it does contain the phrase “Google is pleased to announce the release of BitCoinJ, …”. Still, that is a message from the original author of the software; it is neither a press release nor written by a different party at Google, which I would expect to see if Google was actually promoting or considering using Bitcoin or BitCoinJ.