Hm, but it was the way they managed the transition. When I joined (actually I believe I joined literally the day before the cut-off for the holiday gift so got it even tho I started in December 2011)... it was "free Nexus" (and so on, choose from a list, etc) and then it was "very cheap hardware devices we have excess inventory of" and then it was "donation to a charity we chose" and people got miffed because it just smelled like a big tax write-off.

They would have been much better off just eliminating the holiday gift with a heartfelt letter from Larry explaining that he didn't want a creeping culture of entitlement and we were all aware we were compensated handsomely anyways so happy holidays, you'll get your annual bonus soon anyways. Pretending the charity thing was a gift was a bit weird. At that point I was giving 5-10x that amount in my own cash to charities anyways.

It's handled a bit better now, because you get to choose the charity, and it's accompanied by a good matching charity drive program etc.

There was a story I read a while back about Veterans being unhappy with the red cross for not offering free donuts because they had back during WW2.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-...

Step 1. create a charity that would "adopt" Google employees and give them Pixel phones

Step 2. choose that charity and pick yourself for an adoption

That's not going to qualify for 501(c)(3) status: https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz...

Step 0: remember that people have been creating scam charities for a long time, so the IRS looks for it, knows more than you do about it, and does not like it.

It was just a joke. I'm not from US and have no idea how any of this work :)

To me the whole idea of a gift where the employer donates money to charities in a name of a employee seems like "The Human Fund" sketch from Seinfeld rather than anything that would actually exist in a real world.

Create a church instead..