Bottom line, he did something that affected the company without any authority. His action implied the product was Google blessed without the company fully knowing about it. Google has spent billions to protect its reputation and then you have a random guy put out a self create product without the company even knowing. They had a case for suing him for millions. Of Course, they wouldn't have been able to collect but it would have been hell for him. They also had a case for criminal fraud. All in all he's lucky he only got fired.

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matheusmoreira 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> and then you have a random guy put out a self create product

Random guy? He was a Google employee. Looks like he was just doing his job.

> Google has spent billions to protect its reputation

Not sure billions are enough here, since Google's reputation is terrible in spite of it, and this episode certainly isn't helping.

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fhub 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The director that did the announcement tweet may have provided some authority. He seems to have left Google voluntarily recently after 14 years.

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teitoklien 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You made a typo, it should be "Google spent billions eroding its reputation" [0]

[0](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

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nailer 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s a CLI for Google Workspace. Google Workspace is a genuine Google Product.

Edit reply to person below (sorry, rate limit):

> Just because you work for Google does not mean you can release products under their name.

Releasing open source projects that use company APIs is about 50% of the work of devrel staff. The rest is making content about what you and your customers did/could build.

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WheelsAtLarge 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Google Workspace is but the CLI is not. These are 2 related but different products. Had he just released it under his name then that wouldn't have been such a big issue, maybe, but he used the Google logo which implied it was Google blessed. If I did the same thing, they would have a case for suing me. Just because you work for Google does not mean you can release products under their name. Google spends countless of man-hours to make sure whatever product they put out is as good as possible. And support it on any issues that are found along the way. All companies protect their logo to a high degree simply because of the implications it has when people see it.

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whstl 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It was not released under his name. It is in Google's own googleworkspace Github Organization, alongside 57 other similar projects that consume from the same API.

The organization hosts repos shown here: https://developers.google.com/workspace/drive/api/samples

> Google spends countless of man-hours to make sure whatever product they put out is as good as possible

That's 100% not true for those kinds of projects. There's plenty of "not officially supported" projects in Google's Github.

	▲	nailer 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not complaining about the downvoting but everything in this comment is verifiable from the links you provided.

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4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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magicalist 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, the GP is being overdramatic but releasing a vibe coded cli frontend for an official product in a google github org and that uses your google account credentials is a big deal no matter how unofficial you claim it is in the readme.