Google's cybersecurity project 'Chronicle' is in trouble

Chronicle started as a project within X, the Alphabet-owned moonshot factory, until it became its own cybersecurity company under Google's parent corporation.

It was supposed to be an independent startup with its own contracts and policies -- at least, that's what CEO Stephen Gillett wrote when the business was launched.

Apparently, a lot of Chronicle employees only found out about becoming part of Google at a meeting the day of the announcement.

Employees' compensation also became a sore point, because the tech giant reportedly didn't adjust Chronicle staffers' salaries and stock packages, which were lower than those for other Google employees.

Sales and engineering people have apparently been finding other roles in Google or leaving the company entirely, because they have no product roadmap.

Gillett himself already left for another role inside Google, while co-founder and chief security Mike Wiacek exited the tech giant.

Before getting folded into Google, it announced its first commercial product, Backstory, which Gillett compared to Google Photos. Companies can dump data from, say, employees' devices or servers into it, and it'll analyze the information to automatically and quickly identify threats.Motherboard was able to talk to at least one employee who said they were happy working at Chronicle, though, and that the team is working on new products other than Backstory.

Original article
Author: Mariellamoon

The latest Tweets from Mariella Moon (@mariella_moon). Associate editor @engadget. Pitch me cool stuff on space tech and robots: mariella[@]engadget. For freelance work, PM me. Philippines

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