This is a nasty thing to do without proper permits and I fully support Google getting slapped for it. For a country who has practically relied on forestry for 100+ years, the native Finnish subcontractors that everyone uses for these things are surprisingly bad at doing it properly. Last year another company casually crushed over some protected freshwater pearl mussels while doing cuts – which was enviromentally speaking actually a much worse thing than what Google did this year. Nobody outside of Finland probably heard about it though, because there was no “big evil company” involved.
The final responsibility is still Google’s though, of course, but those subcontractors really should have more sense and understanding in what they’re doing.
All that said, let’s calibrate the magnitude of this disaster. They felled 300-400 hectares of commercial forest. That’s about 0.06% of the annual forest harvest in Finland.
Google getting slapped for it
Are you nuts? They deserve the guillotine. Every single one of them. Fuck them. Pieces of shit.
Last week, Google’s Finland country manager, Antti Järvinen, apologised for the forest clearings but claimed the company had acted “on the best understanding we had of the legislation at the time”.
That understanding being “it’s more profitable to just do it and pay the fine”
So do something.
Yes, please. Fellow Europeans do something. It’s so easy. /s
Will only get worse from there, if no action will be taken now.
I really hope Finns will find organizers to stand up.
Each tree is priceless, and the forest is more than the sum of its parts.
Expropriate Google’s assets to make up for some of the loss.
Ban them for a year and fine them for triple what is a fair penalty.
Otherwise it’s a business expense
“When will these Fins rise up and do something?Don’t they see what is happening and they are just sitting around doing nothing. They voted for this.”
Looks to me like YOU guys voted for this, not the Fins
USA does not have jurisdiction over Finland, just sayin’
There he is
The “move fast, break things” shtick. They mean laws with it. Worst case, you pay a fine.
If the world was a just place they’d pay a fine and pay to have new trees planted where the old ones where removed. Anything short of that is simply the cost of doing business.
You’re not wrong, but Google didn’t just take the trees. They stripped the topsoil:
After the tech company illegally stripped the entire area to build a datacentre – taking even the top soil with it – all that remains is a vast expanse of mud indented with the trail marks of machinery, puddles and mounds of earth, roots and branches.
Wonder why. Wouldn’t have anything to do with making sure Google could not be ordered to replant the illegally felled trees, I’m sure.
There should be criminal investigations over that and prosecution of Google employees or their contractors, whoever was operating in Finland (and someone had to). If that was indeed all legal, than laws need to be changed.
'See when you’re rich, they let you do it".
So I assume just a minor fine and some angry words?
Each tree is probably more than $10,000+. Doing the math, they’ll probably pay a fine of about $100, give or take $100
Knowing Finland’s governments, it won’t be even those. They’ll more likely take Google’s side and tell the population how it’s a price we must pay for being competitive, and how we need these foreign corporations raping Finnish nature to create jobs and shit. No European bougie gives a shit about the countries they lead or the populations they claim to represent.
Well, the current government is run by corporate puppets and right wing nutters that were willing to do anything just to be called ministers.
Not very hard to guess how this is gonna go.
Yup, that’s true. For me it seems that even the nominally leftist and ““socialist”” seem to be of like minds with the corporate stooges.
“Petteri Orpo, said attracting investment was a ‘top priority’ and ‘the value of the data economy extends far beyond direct investment’” Bull. Shit. Unless they have a plan to tax the snot out of this DC they’ll get nothing but resource drain and a handful, maybe two handfuls, of jobs.
I think what happens is that governments look at the plans and their brains light up thinking it’s like an old-time factory. The AI company then shows how many people will be employed in construction and let’s the official go on and think that work will continue.
They do have that spreding fine system that scales to income. We can hope…
Don’t the ai data centers run at a loss? A negative fine would be called subvention then…
/s (hopefully)
No that’s just for the poors and proles. The corporations will never face repercussions because the politicians are in their C-suite
Nah just some rage click farming as a distraction from telling everyone only America is this pathetic.
250,000?! Jesus Christ
Tried that, doesn’t work on trees
I think they nailed him to a cross, not trees. Still didn’t work… but, the more you know!
nah today we worship muppet jesus
All because normies can’t take it upon themselves to do any research and change search engines and stop using google products…we gave them this power.
I hate people.
Individual action as a way to effect change or “voting with your dollar” is a myth that these large corporations benefit from. Sure, we should stop using their services, but you’re never going to convince people to individually give things up in the hundreds of millions.
You gotta force legislators into actually doing their jobs, and failing that, burn down the fucking data centers.
Collective misbehavior requires collective correction.
While I agree, its apathy and stupidity that led us to this point. Big tech would have nowhere near this much power if every single person didnt willingly hand out all of their data at every turn and use every big tech product that was advertised to them.
Big tech would have nowhere near this much power if every single person didnt willingly hand out all of their data at every turn and use every big tech product that was advertised to them.
Sure they would. They don’t need every single person, they just need a lot. Most people are apathetic and stupid, this kind of hypothetical doesn’t really get us anywhere. If your mechanism for change doesn’t work when most people are apathetic and stupid, it isn’t going to work.
Lol blame people while a whole government does fucking nothing but be concerned.
Well yeah but the people elected the government…but yes theyre all corrupt so it doesnt matter much.
It is capitalism that got us corporations and data centers. nobody voted to live under capitalism, and the last time people tried to do anything else we had a civil war over it. blaming the actions of a government and the completely undemocratic system it derives its power from on the people it governs is stupid. you should blame those in power, the politicians and their capitalist overlords, instead of the people who mostly have no say in what their government decides to do to them.
I’m doing my part.
Even made a video to help people get away from Google search.
(TLDW: If you’re stuck using Google, switch to udm14.com. For a good commercial search alternative, use Mojeek. For a non-commercial search alternative, try Marginalia Search.)
