There are plenty of legitimate reasons as to why a company chooses to remain secretive in their operations. One reason is to maintain a competitive edge over the competition. If they don’t know what you’re doing, they might not have time to come up with a solution to beat it, or if by the time they do it might be too late.
This is why many companies such as Google, Apple, and Samsung stress the importance of preventing leaks. However it seems that Google’s practice of keeping things a secret might be a tad overboard, or at least that’s according to a lawsuit spotted by The Information (via 9to5Google) in which an anonymous Google employee is suing the company for being too secretive.
The lawsuit targets Google’s “Stop Leaks” program, which is an internal program that has Google employees report leaks via a Chrome extension to a team who will then try to trace the leak back to the source. It sounds fair, doesn’t it? However the employee’s issue with this is that apparently this violates labor laws and prevents employees from discussing issues like workplace conditions, wages, and any potential regulatory/legal violations inside the company.
Google has yet to respond to the lawsuit, but in the meantime for those who have a decent grasp on legalese, you can check out the lawsuit in its entirety here.