"Don't be evil" they used to say.

PaulKeeble 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They dropped that a long time ago, at least a decade ago. Which is really an odd thing to do, what company would think that not being evil was holding it back but Google clearly did.

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pwg 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"Don't be evil" was dropped after the DoubleClick acquisition completed their internal takeover of the old "Don't be evil" Google (Google purportedly purchased DoubleClick, in reality they 'did' purchase them, but then the old DoubleClick advertisers slowly took over old Google from the inside out).

What is called "Google" today is actually the old, fully evil, advertising firm "DoubleClick" pretending to be "Google" to make use of the goodwill the "Google" brand name used to have attached to it.

	▲	tgma 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Couldn't be more simplistic. Of course a three trillion dollar Google would behave differently than a 2008 Google with or without DoubleClick. Even today, I would argue an average sample of Googlers will likely think slightly differently about these things than an average sample of Facebook employees; but of course both will have to respond to influence from the external world: i.e. customer, society, govt.

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matt_kantor 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

While this is a common quip that I find pretty funny, it's not really true. What actually happened was that while updating their code of conduct[0], Google changed it to only say "don't be evil" in one place instead of multiple[1].

Google was also sued by former employees who claim they were fired because they tried to prevent Google from doing evil[2], in accordance with the code of conduct they agreed to. Sadly that lawsuit ended with a secret settlement, so we'll never know what a jury thinks. Since "don't be evil" is still in there I suppose it could come up again.

[0]: https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of...

[1]: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-dont-be-evil/2540...

[2]: https://www.npr.org/2021/11/29/1059821677/google-dont-be-evi...

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john_strinlai 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

this is a fun story, but... its a story.

here is the google code of conduct: https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of...

scroll down to the bottom, and you will see:

"And remember... don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!"

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GolfPopper 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And we all ought to have dropped them, then. (Most of us, myself included, did not.)

	▲	Jensson 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		No other big american company says "don't be evil", if you aren't dropping Apple and Microsoft then you it doesn't make sense to drop Google.

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fencepost an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

These days Google fails at even the much simpler "Don't be fscking creepy."

That plus aggressive avoidance of anything resembling customer service and what sounds like an internal environment that may be moving towards cage matches makes it worth avoiding for anything important.

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traderj0e 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Honestly this slogan was always a joke. Obviously an evil company would say that.

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smallmancontrov 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I do think they earnestly tried to swim against the current, but yeah, they always knew where it was taking them. Removing the yellow background behind paid results was the turning point IMO.

> The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.

- Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, 1998

	▲	traderj0e 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Idk what they've even done that was not profit-motivated. They loss-led newer products in the 2000s just like everyone else, then 2010s started tightening up, then 2020s went to maximizing profit and paying out. That's ok in a way really, they're a corporation after all. But nobody ever took that "don't be evil" slogan seriously unless maybe they were Google employees.
	▲	jll29 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Such a wise observation from a paper published in the now-defunct journal "Computer Networks and ISDN Systems" after being rejected for the SIGIR conference... ...then BackRub turned Gogool mis-spelled, and the rest is history.