[fnfjfk]

1. No, Google isn’t taking actual money bets from their employees.

2. No, Google isn’t taking actual money bets from their employees.

3. What employees do with their vested RSUs isn’t at all the same as hosting an internal gambling platform. Once they are vested, employees own the stock, they can do whatever they want. One could sell them all and use the money to bet on roulette, which I think is obviously gambling, but that’s also obviously not Google hosting a gambling platform internally?

I’m just surprised that Google hosting a platform where employees gambled was… allowed? This isn’t a moral judgement, I’m surprised that Google was operating a gambling platform internally and legal etc. thought that was a good idea.

[s1artibartfast]

I think you are making a lot of assumptions about how the program was run. For example, are you assuming that the employees were betting their own money or exposed to any downside at all?

I assume they were given free credit for the system, and had the chance to turn it into cash bonus if they won.

It is closer to a company giving out a prize for the winner of a free fantasy sports league.

[eitally]

I'm not even sure there was any way to turn credits won into anything fungible. Everyone was given a small amount of credit to start, and it was perfectly allowable to go negative... Afaict, it was almost more of a "long bets" type sentiment platform where employees could "vote" (with their bets) on one side of a wager or another -- where many of the wagers dealt with inside baseball topics.

[fnfjfk]

Outside of this Google case, that’s what predictions markets are, they’re for gambling.

The Google case turns out to not be real money, but it’s weird that the article never said that, and it’s weird that the author responded with three points of whataboutism instead of just saying “it wasn’t real money”.

If someone wrote an article that Google set up a roulette wheel in the microkitchen and employees “bet” on it, yes I’d assume they were running an actual casino and find that weird too!