Former Google engineer Manu Cornet describes his time at Google in two phases. He mentions the first as "there were malfunctions in the wonderland" while the second as "disappointment".
These two descriptions are in fact the subtitles for the two comic book volumes published by Cornet about his former employer. He calls them comics Goomics.
Although Cornet was an engineer, 11 of his 14 years at Google created comics about employees, quirks, culture and, ultimately, the biggest social and ethical issues facing the company and its employees.
Some of these matters involved Google's contracts with governments services such as ICE, or the development of a special search engine for the government of China that complies with the country's censorship and many others.
These problems caused Cornet to worry about his position at Google and pushed him to make a change. Cornet recently resigned and took on a new job (on Twitter, a company he says has fewer moral issues). He is the latest employee of a major technology company (including employees on Facebook and Amazon) to resign in protest of the company's overall behavior.
“Καθώς τα χρόνια περνούσαν, υπήρχαν όλο και περισσότερα πράγματα που μου προκαλούσαν ηθικούς προβληματισμούς σχετικά με αυτό που έκανε η εταιρεία σε υψηλότερο επίπεδο”, δήλωσε ο Cornet. “Έπρεπε να κοιτάξω τη μεγαλύτερη picture και να σκεφτώ ότι ίσως θα ήμουν καλύτερα αλλού.”
Cornet posted the comics on the company's message board, and employees could sign up to receive the new designs in their inboxes. Over the years, about 10 percent of employees signed up, and eventually subscribers reached 13 to 14. At one point, the former CEO of Google Eric Schmidt he had placed a print of one of Cornet's comics on his office door.
Now that Cornet has left Google, he is making the Goomics archive available to the public for free onnetwork and in two book volumes. It tells the “story of a tech company”, or as Cornet puts it: the “evolution from a colorful 'no evil' company, an idealistic view of Google that wasn't too far from reality" to "a company just like the others .”
