Last week a Utah woman was hit by a car after following the “Get Directions” provided by Google Maps. She has, of course, filed a lawsuit against The Goog seeking more than $100,000 in damages.
Her lawyers claim that Google is liable because it did not warn her that the route would not offer a safe place for a pedestrian to walk. However, Google countered this saying that the site does in fact warn the pedestrian that it might be unsafe. Her lawyers then volleyed back saying that she was using a Blackberry and not the web (or an Android phone) and there was no warning. Perhaps Google only warns Android users?
Search Engine Land then got into the foray and walked the route with her lawyers. They questioned why she didn’t use the sidewalk on the other side of the road. She responded that it was “pitch black” outside.
But if she had an Android phone, it may have told her to cross the road, or at least functioned as a flashlight.
Now that Google founders Brin and Page are well past their 30th birthdays (and all the hippies from the 60s are in their 60s) the mantra must be updated: Don’t Trust Anyone Over 50. But not because they’re money-grubbing corporate power-mongers, but because they can’t keep up with the New Corporation. They can’t think outside the box.
The California Supreme Court is now set to decide whether Google really does hate old people… or just old people in the box.
When a then-emerging Google recruited engineer Brian Reid in the summer of 2002, it appeared to have landed a Silicon Valley superstar. Reid had managed the team that built one of the first Internet search engines at AltaVista. He’d helped cofound the precursor company to Adobe Systems. He’d even worked on Apollo 17.
But within two years, Google decided that the 54-year-old Reid was not a “cultural fit” for the company and fired him, allegedly after co-workers had described him as “an old man,” “slow,” “sluggish” and “an old fuddy-duddy.” Reid responded with an age discrimination lawsuit blasting Google’s 20-something culture for shunning his generation in the workplace.
Read Full Article at Mercury News.