I work at Google, although I have no idea about this particular situation. Pick any major event, internal or external. If you look around company forums (mailing lists, Google+, memes, etc) you will invariably see 10+ people voicing opinions that are dumb if not outright illegal.
It doesn't mean that Google is ever going to _do_ any of those things. It's the result of having 100,000 people who all think they're smart and are never told they can't speak out.
So I would not be at all surprised if a few of the 100,000 employees suggested tweaking search to do X or Y. But I can tell you without even looking that there was not a plan for doing so by anyone with the power to change anything. By the time you get to a design doc, reason tends to prevail.
I work at Google, although I have no idea about this particular situation. Pick any major event, internal or external. If you look around company forums (mailing lists, Google+, memes, etc) you will invariably see 10+ people voicing opinions that are dumb if not outright illegal.
It doesn't mean that Google is ever going to _do_ any of those things. It's the result of having 100,000 people who all think they're smart and are never told they can't speak out.
So I would not be at all surprised if a few of the 100,000 employees suggested tweaking search to do X or Y. But I can tell you without even looking that there was not a plan for doing so by anyone with the power to change anything. By the time you get to a design doc, reason tends to prevail.