Nobody is restricting Google from doing anything. They are expressing--in a way that is part of, and frankly should be expected of being a member of, one of those "free societies" you mention--that Google is unwelcome, and no, nobody is obligated to make you feel welcome. There are cases where not making somebody welcome kinda makes you an asshole, but that does not, frankly, apply to anybody who's got a stock ticker symbol.

This is "you piss in the pool wherever you go, please stay away from our pool." This isn't NIMBY in any meaningful way and the comparison is downright mendacious.

> Nobody is restricting Google from doing anything

From the article: In September activists occupied the building it was to be located in for several hours.

That seems like the activists were preventing them

> This is "you piss in the pool wherever you go, please stay away from our pool." This isn't NIMBY in any meaningful way and the comparison is downright mendacious.

Saying you do [something I don't like] and I don't want you to do [thing I don't like] in my neighborhood is exactly NIMBY

You realize that Google has billions upon billions of dollars and effectively unlimited weight to throw around, yes? A few protestors hanging out in a building does not prevent them from doing anything they want to. They have run the numbers and presumably realized that having your neighbors not want you there is not worth the PR hit of doing it--but literally nobody is stopping it from happening.

This poor-benighted-Google thing is gross. These companies are not on anyone's side.

> Saying you do [something I don't like] and I don't want you to do [thing I don't like] in my neighborhood is exactly NIMBY

No, that's most definitely not NIMBY. NIMBY means you support something when it's farther away but oppose it happening close to you. It stands for "not in my backyard", not "not in any backyard".

Presumably the residents there use Google services. They likely want Google to exist, but just not in their back yard

"You use the services that have functionally become required for daily life regardless of whether you like them or not, so it is in some way hand-flappingly hypocritical not to let them step on your community too" is not really the winning argument here.

What Google services are required for daily life? Don't they all have competitors?

> What Google services are required for daily life? Don't they all have competitors?

Not really. It's sort of like RMS with open-source hardware: yes there are a handful of modern computers that can be made to work without binary blobs, but it's a lot of trouble and only a few people will actually do that out of principle. It's practically requred to run proprietary binary blobs. Similarly, Bing, Duckduckgo, and OpenStreetMap exist, but Google services are practically required for modern daily life.

For an illustration: a typical local shop is going put the effort into making sure its information is correct on Google Maps and that their website is indexed on Google; but it's going to put zero effort into updating its info on OpenStreetMap or making sure it's indexed by Bing. If you want info about that shop, you're probably going to have to use Google.

> For an illustration: a typical local shop is going put the effort into making sure its information is correct on Google Maps and that their website is indexed on Google; but it's going to put zero effort into updating its info on OpenStreetMap or making sure it's indexed by Bing. If you want info about that shop, you're probably going to have to use Google.

That's a great example, thanks for mentioning it. I'll probably use it from now on.

It's not about whether "they want Google to exist", that's just reducing the whole thing to absurdity. It's not about mere existence. It's about whether they're fine with the approaches taken by the company and whether they're suddenly opposing it when it directly affects them.

Actually a large faction of the protest has been getting local businesses off of google services and educating a thirsty public about alternatives. Most people in kreutzberg already thought of google as evil. their foothold organized people around removing it from their lives, regardless of how impossible that is

Exactly. The "my" part is operative here.

If I had to guess, a lot of those protestors probably don't care if Google ever opens an office anywhere--but, not being billion-dollar panopticons-as-a-service, they are constrained to act locally rather than globally.

"you piss in the pool wherever you go, please stay away from our pool."

Several people mentioned something to this effect. Nobody makes clear what they are referring to. Is this just about gentrification?

> This is "you piss in the pool wherever you go, please stay away from our pool." This isn't NIMBY in any meaningful way and the comparison is downright mendacious

It's also the same line of thinking behind Trump's wall and hostility to immigration in general: "people I don't like should stay out."

Well your not welcome (google in this case) but that doesn't give you the right to deny others who might want to move to berlin and work for google - that sound s like UKip policy in the uk.

And what does having a stock ticker matter presumably you took advantage of the German miracle and the rise of VW and others.

They aren't denying Google and it's employees the right to move to Berlin, there's tons of areas in Berlin for tech companies to be, some tolerant of them, some actively trying to get more companies to move in. (and of course Google legally would have been free to move in despite the protests, but choose not to). That's needlessly over-the-top rhetoric for a localized protest.

This would go against the interests of the locals, that, frankly, in a community should come before the interests of some programmer that would find a job somewhere else.

It's complicated: if your freedom of movement harms somebody else, is it ethical? As an emigrant I can value the freedom of labour and movement but I can also see that this harms people if it becomes too extreme like in Berlin. That's why here lot of leftists are criticizing open borders and free immigration: mass migrations are a product of capitalism and we should solve the problem at the root, not just cope with the symptom.

I used to agree with you, but considering the fact that San Francisco has gone from “semi-affordable haven for weirdos and off-beat culture” to “single most expensive city in America filled primarily with tech workers and the homeless” in less than 30 years, I don’t any more. Semi-similar situations for lower Manhattan, Paris, East London, ad infinitum.

A place can have a unique culture that’s worth maintaining. How to maintain it - I don’t know. But converting everything to MegaCo offices probably isn’t the solution.

San Francisco is actually a good example of what NIMBYism does. Zoning restrictions and rent controls that are unrivaled in the US did everything to that city you've just stated as things to avoid while attributing them to "MegaCo".

The housing market by its nature has a weak flexibility to adapt to new demand. NIMBYism acts like a lever on that inflexibility.

Building more housing would not suddenly make MegaCo's presence and impact on the culture less noticable in X city.

Not even 30 years, more like 15.

Resistance from a community is not a "restriction", and characterising this as NIMBYism would be intellectually dishonest if it weren't so ridiculous. Google is not a group, it's a vastly wealthy and powerful corporate entity, and objecting to its presence in a community is not a slippery slope or precedent-setting in the sense which you (again, preposterously) imply.

The idea of a "free society" is a myth. Something perpetuated by neo-liberals who think all that matters is absolute freedom and money. News flash: Culture matters. At least, it matters to people whose only interest is not money.