Instead of collaborating or supporting me, Google stole my idea

https://github.com/google/project-gameface/issues/1

by FloatArtifact • 3 years ago

547 107 3 years ago

github.com

steeve• 3 years ago

That was a lot darker than I thought it would be. Google should absolutely respond.

As for Oz, what an incredible story.

klipklop• 3 years ago

Agreed, the story is so wild it’s hard to believe at first.

metadat• 3 years ago

And no reply from Elgoog since this was posted back in May, now more than 4 months ago. "Disappointing" would be an understatement.

lmoroney12• 3 years ago

I wasn't made aware of it until the HackerNews posting, and I was on vacation then. I'm back now, and I posted a statement above.

paul79866• 3 years ago

Google is known for doing this as seen in this other HN post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929

As well I met them and it wasn't a pleasant experience. It was a decade ago around the same time Sonos met with them and they did similar to Sonos. Though Sonos recently won their case against them https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/6/22871121/sonos-google-pate....

rmbyrro4• 3 years ago

Though Sonos recently won their case against them

Ouch. That one hurt. Google is looking worse every day. Is it going to be "the Yahoo of tomorrow?"

theolivenbaum• 3 years ago

Reminds me of something they mentioned on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Billion_Dollar_Code series: Google asking small startups for a sales offer, copying the startup instead, and using the offer as a shield against future lawsuits (look, they only thought it was worth X)

DiabloD3• 3 years ago

Somebody at the DoJ should reach out to this guy and see if he'd be willing to testify.

sneak• 3 years ago

Testify for what? Ideas aren't IP. His license is permissive. He literally gave his idea away to the world for free.

How did anything Google did harm this guy in any way?

Kaibeezy• 3 years ago

Evil.

solardev6• 3 years ago

Don't be (caught being) evil.

abrookewood• 3 years ago

Google have fallen from a company I used to admire, to something grubby and untrustworthy.

solardev6• 3 years ago

That's just the nature of capitalism, isn't it? I don't think any company stays good once they get big enough.

Maybe the B Corps and co-ops stand a chance...

athorax• 3 years ago

"be evil whenever possible" - Google, maybe (probably)

lainga2• 3 years ago

I'd like to hear the other side of the story from the GOOG employee who has been mentioned in the issue []

[] https://github.com/lmoroney

ed. not GOOG user, employee, but GH user, you know...

gman832• 3 years ago

It seems like this guy has nothing to do with this project? I mean, he could have told other Googler's about this idea, but maybe it's just a coincidence?

lainga2• 3 years ago

Based on a sibling comment I thought he might have merely collected information about Mr Oz's project, in a DevRel role, and someone else gotten hold of it. But IANAL and IANAJ, I just thought that since he's been mentioned he'd like to speak for himself. Esp. considering what some of the sibling comments are saying.

CSN3RD• 3 years ago

He was one of two authors announcing the project on Google's blog. https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-project-gameface/

swader999• 3 years ago

They should just be good about this but I guess that isn't their motto. And I tend not to believe articles like this.

rg111• 3 years ago

I am here to say something tangential.

I found that deeplearning.ai and GoogleX in edX had some MOOCs where the person who is facing the allegation was an instructor.

After some minutes, I found the person to be average, and not really up to my expectations as an instructor in AI. The rigor of those MOOCs were quite low, too.

Digging up, I found that he was an "AI Advocate" at Google, which is just devrel. He is not a full-fledged developer or a scientist or research engineer.

Of course, I didn't finish or purchase those MOOCs.

kristjansson• 3 years ago

I think this is useful context and deserves fewer downvotes than it currently has.

ingenieroariel• 3 years ago

I have a lot of respect for Oz's ability to ship and skills / imagination.

Only thing I can think of is for people to think thoroughly the license they set. BSD in this case, 4 years ago. And to not take any contributions unless they sign a CLA so the license can be changed in the future.

As for my own point of view, I screen apps/libraries that are not MIT/BSD/Apache2 and I may want to link statically to or sell services for and try to sponsor on Github projects I rely heavily on.

[1] https://github.com/ozramos/handsfree/blob/master/LICENSE

galaxyLogic2• 3 years ago

I don't know what is the remedy here since it seems Google broke no laws, did it?

Can you sue someone for "stealing your idea"? Unfortunately this is the world we live in. Only thing I can think of is that people vote into power parties who are willing to check the power of big corporations:

https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2023/09/biden-doj...

fallat• 3 years ago

The remedy is Google gives the guy a job or some damn payment. "They don't have to" - well no shit, we don't have to be nice to each other, yet most of us are. Why can't Google be nice to people?

msm_• 3 years ago

Because Google is a corporation, not a person. Even if Google decides to be "nice" in this case, this will be for purely selfish reasons (they decide good PR they get from paying this guy is worth more than whatever they pay). Expecting corporations to behave like people is a sure way to get disappointed.

pvorb• 3 years ago

They don't have to be nice to people, but it would be better if they (still) were not evil.

akomtu2• 3 years ago

Corporations can't be nice. They exist to multiply capital of the investors. Among those investors there is a big one - 401ks, index funds and other assets of small people managed by big firms. As an individual investor, do you want your 401k to grow? If you do, you're among the many who force Google to promote efficient nihilists who bring money. If you don't, why haven't you invested your savings in a nonprofit fund helping the homeless?

lol768• 3 years ago

The legal system isn't the only means to a "resolution".

Public shaming can work pretty well too, sometimes.

toyg• 3 years ago

Just because something is legal, doesn't mean that it isn't utterly immoral.

The Google guy should be ashamed of himself, apologize, and try to remedy the injustice he perpetrated - get Oz a job, and/or credit him in their work.

galaxyLogic2• 3 years ago

Google guy should be ashamed

Should be but is not, that's the problem. He's probably happy about a pay-raise.

The problem is that Google has the monopoly. No use trying to boycott a monopoly.

The only remedy is anti-monopoly and related legislation. And for that we need to elect (into power) politicians that are willing to enact such legislation.

lmoroney12• 3 years ago

While I'm not a perfect person, indeed, I am far from it, I did not perpetrate any injustice here, and I resent the accusation.

empiko• 3 years ago

I really do not see what google did wrong here. There should be no flag-planting in the open source community. The fact that one person develops an idea does not mean that nobody else has a right to develop their own version. In this case the authors has even deleted all his repositories due to mental stress. It makes even more sense for Google to develop their own version so that they can be in the control of their project.

throwmeout123• 3 years ago

Open source is unsustainable if we act like this. A 100k grant costs a fraction of the latest leetcode wanker member of the blind church of tc. Add to it a couple of seniors to mentor the dude a couple afternoons a Week and you’re steering the project without too many problems at lower cost.

“Give back to the community” used to be something I admired in the American culture as an European, but I guess most exchanged it for a L6 promo

aaomidi• 3 years ago

The wrong things is that they actually spent time talking to Oz.

It wasn’t just a random repository they came across.

Anyway this is why I GPL everything. At least it ensures that the changes to it remain free.

happymellon• 3 years ago

I completely disagree.

Just because it is not illegal does not mean you want your employees acting this way. Google should at a minimum have in place a program to help these folks start a small company for the purposes of acquiring, with the implied benefit for the employee that it shows their leadership capabilities. Ripping off a disabled veteran should reflect badly on Google and therefore disciplinary actions can be taken.

The fact that it isn't a thing at Google speaks volumes.

calrain• 3 years ago

This is a problem with specific people within Google, and Google's inability to manage their staff.

Google's Legal department can definitely resolve this problem.

solardev6• 3 years ago

They're probably just hoping it'd blow over if they ignore/bury it. Google's not exactly known for being good at responding to anyone...

pickingdinner• 3 years ago

Ya, F google. But that's what corporations do. I wouldn't expect otherwise. But that's also why the PR department could get on this and make it right, and profitable (which is always the only motivation).

The Honda "random acts of helpfulness" goes a bit too far to be tasteful to me, because their acts are so random.

But if an individual could use help, and the situation is related to a companies service or product, the business should help, even just for PR, especially if they are selling to consumers, whom are all individuals.

pedalpete• 3 years ago

The first things that come to mind are

1) why would Google steal this instead of bringing Oz onto the team, which assumes he wanted to work for Google)

2) what can we as a community do to support Oz .

Oz, if you're reading this, you're obviously a very capable person, how do you think we can support you. Not just in relation to MidiBlocks, but beyond. That is just one project, I'm sure you've got more in you, if you want to pursue other things.

romanhn4• 3 years ago

With a big company like Google you can't just randomly hire someone without putting them through the rigorous interview process that can be months long (been there, done that), accomplishments or not (see the Homebrew dude).

rmbyrro4• 3 years ago

They have thousands of contractors and consultants that don't go through this process. That's not a valid reason.

dappermanneke2• 3 years ago

of course not, you have to acquire their LLC to let them skip the interview process. so building stuff does count, but only if done commercially

0cf8612b2e1e• 3 years ago

So if John Carmack, Guido, Rich Hickey, Donald Knuth wanted a job, they would first have to leet code like everyone else?

The reason the failure to invert a binary tree story was notable was because the dude invented Homebrew. He was supposed to enter though the back door, but someone screwed up and made him go through the regular mechanism.

exabrial• 3 years ago

Gotta answer dem 1337 code questions.

In a previous life on a job site, the term was called measuring dicks but I digress.

midnitewarrior• 3 years ago

It's not "Google", it's people on project teams looking to elevate their careers. There's greed, credit, ego, and notoriety at stake, and sharing it with others is not a priority for many.

"Google" is only going to care if it affects Legal or PR. If you want Google to care, this is going to need a lot more exposure. It will also be really bad for the people at Google responsible for this situation if this gets too much attention.

WesolyKubeczek• 3 years ago

It is Google in that it enables, fosters, incentivizes, rewards culture exactly like that.

lmoroney12• 3 years ago

It wasn't stolen. See my above statement.

We supported Oz in the ways that we could.

chaps2• 3 years ago

Oz, if you're reading this -- is there anything we can do to support you and your work?

madrox• 3 years ago

I'm often skeptical of claims like the one I read here...not this time. This is is pretty egregious, and thanks to Professor Levin for providing lots of supporting material, making the offense even more obvious.

lmoroney12• 3 years ago

Professor Levin is welcome to contact me, if he wants to learn the truth.

dinkleberg• 3 years ago

This is depressing to read.

This is so close to being the amazing story we all want to hear about.

A veteran, suffering from PTSD, falls on hard times and ends up homeless. Despite his hard situation, he strives to help those who are even worse off. He learns how to program and uses these skills to build something to improve the lives of those are severely disadvantaged. He spends years working on this project and ends up building something really cool and useful.

So useful in fact that his dedication pays off and one of the biggest software companies in the world is inspired and brings him on to scale up this technology to help improve the lives of millions.

Except of course that doesn't end up happening. Instead, we're left reminded that life can be cruel.

rootkea• 3 years ago

life can be cruel.

We can be more specific here. "Some people can be cruel".

(Of course, I'm talking about the one who took all the notes from Oz then instead of giving him the credits ghosted him completely and later co-authored the blog post announcing the "inspired" project. https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-project-gameface)

paul79866• 3 years ago

Ummm it's not the employee it's Google and it's culture of thievery as it ...

- Copied iOS and created Android

- Worked with Sonos then stole from Sonos; Sonos 10 years later wins a victory in court https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/26/23739273/google-sonos-sma...

- To inviting a MIT student out for an interview who demoed her tech & they patented it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929

To many other examples ... it's not the employees it's the company!

dappermanneke2• 3 years ago

sounds like this dude got caught in someone’s promo packet assembly. i wouldn’t worry too much if i were him. this’ll be deprecated in three years or so once it served its purpose to signal how good of an engineer the person who made it as part of their promo package is

somsak22• 3 years ago

would highly recommend Oz look for some mental health resources. nowadays there's plenty of self-study online, no insurance or expensive therapist needed. wishing him best of luck.

anuraaga• 3 years ago

It's interesting how even before this has taken hold on HN the repo was already basically dead

https://github.com/google/project-gameface/pull/31#issuecomm...

More interesting is not having the "This is not an official Google project so not supported" disclaimer so many repos in their org has.

Shady origins, shoddy maintenance, but the incident will be forgotten as is usually the case. The reality is Google still has huge mindshare and respect among engineers and will likely be immune to damage in these situations.

lmoroney12• 3 years ago

That's really sad.

We wanted GameFace to be something that we kickstarted and then donated to the community to run with. That's still the case.

FloatArtifact• 3 years ago

I would like to respect Oz decision to close the issue and his desire to see gameface succeed. For those that are uninformed please read the issue.

Imoroney what can we do as a community? This project is still in need of a measure of Google support to be handed off to the community. The project needs fostering to develop community lead maintainers.

This project could be useful as a library, not just as a front end. Accessibility must scale to its users needs. For instance, integrating with speech recognition, eye tracking, and other peripherals allows people to have the most interaction with their environment.

I for one would love to work on hooking into gameface with C#, python for integration alongside grammar based speech recognition.

nojvek• 3 years ago

Playing Evil’s advocate for google

Google has abandoned a ton of projects, and this repo kind of looks abandoned. It’s likely google loses interest in it like they have a deserved reputation.

Google has no obligation to pay anyone other than their employees and vendors.

If Oz doesn’t like what google is doing, he can continue on his own repo right?

malepoon2• 3 years ago

For what it's worth, here's what Moroney is saying:

"I’m out on vacation right now, and will respond when I get back. But these allegations are completely untrue, and massively distressing to me, and to others."

https://twitter.com/lmoroney/status/1702695501542597080

How convenient he's on vacation right now. Why didn't he respond sooner if it's all untrue?

(Also why am I not surprised to see this guy paid for a blue check...)

derangedHorse• 3 years ago

Yeah I don’t understand how he gets tagged on an issue thread like that and doesn’t say anything until it reached enough eyes. Definitely seems suspicious. He also could have easily pointed out some specifics instead of just saying it’s untrue and saying he’ll get back to it after vacation.

lmoroney12• 3 years ago

I wasn't 'tagged' on a thread, and I didn't learn about it until it was posted on here.

RGBCube• 3 years ago

What's wrong with paying for a blue check?

lmoroney12• 3 years ago

It is the truth that I was out on vacation at that time, and largely incommunicado, or at least I was supposed to be until these false allegations arose.

It is the truth that it was, and continues to be, massively distressing to me to be falsely accused like this.

It is the truth that I paid (out of my own pocket) for a blue check, because in the new Twitter that gets me 10x engagement, and I've always used my platform to enable and lift up others. That's what makes these accusations, and the follow-on abuse and attacks over email and otherwise so distressing.

I'm standing by those truths.

loky4i4• 3 years ago

I don't get how people with knowledge like that are homeless, like find any IT job you will have above average salary, and at least you can pay rent then

KETpXDDzR• 3 years ago

The Simpsons had it: https://youtu.be/H27rfr59RiE

lmoroney12• 3 years ago

I would like to take a moment to address claims that Project Gameface was inspired by anything other than the incredible story of Lance Carr. As we’ve mentioned in previously shared documentation, Project Gameface was the direct output of Lance’s experience and a desire to make the world of computing even more accessible.

When Oz approached me, I was already working on what would become Project Gameface, and had a specific technical problem that I was trying to solve. Oz showed me his impressive demo, and we chatted briefly about the problem I was having. Unfortunately Handsfree.js could not solve it, and thus I didn't use Handsfree.js in any capacity.

As I mentioned to Oz when we spoke, I wish him the best with his open source work. Finding new ways to make computing more accessible is an important space that I hope many projects are successful in.

lmoroney12• 3 years ago

If you are coming to this thread, please go back to the GitHub thread that it is linked to, and see updated statements from Oz, including an apology for accusing me of stealing his idea.

Instead of collaborating or supporting me, Google stole my idea

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