Look, I know these are volatile times for the tech giants of Silicon Valley. There are the ongoing travails at Facebook and the worldwide demand that Mark Zuckerberg faces the music on his company’s perceived unhealthy influence.
Share prices yo-yo wildly. In the space of just a few hours, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google lost a collective $172bn in value. Google employees have also turned militant, with staff walking out at 50 locations in protest against harassment and discrimination within the company.
In response to these claims, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, wrote: “As CEO, it’s been personally important to me that we take a much harder line on inappropriate behaviour… Over the past two years we have terminated 48 people, including 13 senior managers and above, for sexual harassment.” As I say, volatile times indeed, but isn’t topping just a little excessive for what is admittedly an unpleasant trait?
Mind you, it wasn’t a good week for the company in another direction, when trailers for a video game were posted on YouTube, owned by Google. Called Cost of Freedom, the game is set in a Nazi concentration camp. At least the developers took the videos down, though quite why they dreamed up the game in the first place is anyone’s guess.
Meanwhile, in Germany, Jens Spahn has launched his campaign to succeed Angela Merkel with a scathing attack on her refugee policy. He says: “The ‘white elephant in the room’ is the question of migration.” Mmm, perhaps something was lost in the translation. Still, it’s nothing on the pachyderm that I once encountered in another newspaper: “The elephant in the room that dare not speak its name.”
• Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnist
