Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto, first uttered by Googler Paul Buchheit (now founder of FriendFeed) in 2001, has long been the pillar of their self-imposed code of conduct. It was amended somewhat in 2006 when CEO Eric Schmidt, under fire for entering the Chinese market with censorship restrictions, said “We actually did an evil scale and decided not to serve at all was worse evil.” He turned it into a sort of evil minimization algorithm.
But the core motto is still displayed prominently on the Google Investor Relations site, and the company appears to be supporting it up 100%.
Not so, apparently. Last week, however, Google’s Marissa Mayer said “It really wasn’t like an elected, ordained motto” during an interview in Australia, adding “I think that ‘Don’t Be Evil’ is a very easy thing to point at when you see Google doing something that you personally don’t like; it’s a very easy thing to point out so it does get targeted a lot.”
There’s a certain disconnect between paragraph two above and what Marrissa says in paragraph 3.
This is most likely not a precursor to an official move away from the motto. I imagine it’s little more than a venting of a frustration that Google continues to be held to a promise made six years ago, when they were under significantly less scrutiny than they are today. Google can’t ditch the motto (the press would eat that up), and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to live up to it. What can they do? Not much. They made this bed. It’s too bad they couldn’t get Buchheit to take it with him when he left to found FriendFeed.
I think they try to be good but when you get as big as them its impossible, you have to answer to your shareholders at the end of the day.
A question that needs addressing is will they give the chinese data they want if requested from someones AppEngine app without their permission?
try search for gmail on google; you see NO advertisements on the right or top. Why? If you try to advertise for this keyword, the MINIMUM is some 25$. Explain to me that this is no evil. If the adwords program is really based on competing companies trying to gain top level access to a certain keyword, it should have been an open game decided by the market, not by google trying to wipe out any chance of anyone trying to push anything close to gmail. They know gmail is extremely crucial to their plans and they will do anything to keep it that way, good or bad, just like any other corporation.
I used to be big fan of Google but these days, donot know the exact reasons but I have lot of respect for MSFT.
It depends on how EVIL is defined.
Can a purely, 100% ethical global giant thrive in a cut throat business world – when others are constantly looking for any weak link to attack
Should you proactively attack BEFORE being attacked
Perhaps the GOAL should be less evil than what has been traditional
But the VIPs of Google are human with flaws and egos just like everyone else surviving in the business world
You simply can not overcome a lifetime of human and societal fallibilties because of idealism
google has gotten huge and it’s impossible not to offend someone in the world based on its technology and endeavors. It’s a huge company like IBM, Coke, GE, or others… Someone in the world will be offended by something that somone does within the company, but in the overall, the company will prevail and people will embrace that company. Who’d buy a $5 cup of coffee, guess Starbucks won that debate, but sure they also piss off people too. Nice profits for the shareholders though… Nice article Michael
Raghu, that has a lot more to do with your ads’ quality score and search volume for that term than the fact that Google happens to own a product by that name. It’s the same if you try to advertise for almost any single word with tens of thousands of daily searches or more…
They will find their values and get them sorted, I am sure of that.
Did not lose my belief in Google’s long range vision which I am sure will be closely tied with their core values.
Dan (6),
Are you saying that there is not a SINGLE entity wanting to advertise for ‘gmail’ keyword whereas ‘email’ keyword has tons of ads to the right and top?
I don’t think so. In fact, google does not even say it openly that they don’t want to display ads for the keyword ‘gmail’ directly, they just have such a high $ amount for the keyword, no one will go for it.
Raghu
Marissa’s pretty damn hot though.
On the evil scale she’s allotted some leeway. I mean, seriously.
She can ordain my motto.
Eh – but, that aside, I don’t see this as any real shift away from the “Don’t Be Evil” thing… we have to consider that “evil” isn’t exactly something that’s been written in stone. Well, there was that movie with Charlton Heston, but I think the stone was really Styrofoam so, you know…
(I think you know my position on Google and its evilness – but just to be clear, I don’t see any seeping from them. Yet. And hopefully that’ll remain the case for awhile.)
It was an impossible, far-reaching, awful motto to begin with.
It’s all mathematics.
Here is more on 6. If I were MSN, Yahoo or AOL, I would love to advertise for gmail keyword for some 10 cents if there were no competition (as seen by current search results). But this is simply impossible since google controls and does not allow any ads for the keyword effectively by keeping the price artificially high.
/me searches for Marissa’s twitter acct.
I think that Google still lives up to its “Do no evil” motto. Of course there are a few things here and there which ring the bell, but that’s sort of unavoidable for a big and diverse company with plenty of people. The important things and the general direction are still of no evil nature.
For anyone thinking about incorporation their new company right now, who is interested in doing good in the world, consider incorporating as a B Corporation:
http://www.bcorporation.net/
This basically means writing social responsibility guidelines directly into your articles of incorporation. Later, when faced with hard decisions, shareholder value will be a major consideration, but it won’t be the one big overwhelming consideration it is with public companies today. Any shareholders that come along later have already bought into the deal.
This is the sort of change that would be very hard to make to a company once it has gotten large, if it can be done at all.
Raghu, maybe they figure that if someone is searching for ‘gmail’, the probably want Google’s Gmail service (for which they have the trademark and the domain anyway).
Another way to look at it is, the keyword is worth $25 as far as google is concerned. They’ve bought it from themselves for that price, and are paying the opportunity cost of not selling it to somebody else for less than that.
Michael
What about covering the Google groups which is the No:1 source of spam to the Usenet. Google is literally destroying Newsgroups.
In my opinion the Worst Evil things Google do are Google Groups and Google pages ( Home of thousands of Spam/Scam sites.
Very nice link, Charlie – thanks. Definitely hadn’t heard of this yet.
Google is great, just don’t be evil…
There are a lot of confused responses to this article.
First: “not being evil” is not the same as “not offending anyone”.
Second: It is just not true that the business world in general is “evil”. Most businesspeople are ethical. Not every corporation is like Microsoft. A company can compete, and make a profit for stockholders, without being evil.
Google, in my opinion, does not live up to its motto. If you are employed by Google overseas, you have to sign a form agreeing that the legal venue for disputes with your employer is Santa Clara, California. Since a significant number of Google employees outside the USA can’t even get a US visa, that essentially means that Google automatically wins any legal dispute with those employees, regardless of the merits. That’s being evil.
life is vicious cycle of greed , moral, ethics and courage and google cant scape from that without dirting its hand… does it make sense?
It might sound like a trite motto, but it has certainly convinced millions of people to trust their personal data to Google.
Well, they basically just told everyone it’s small problem and we want to nip it in the butt.
Will it work?
I’m moving away from using their services but that won’t stop others.
My vote’s on Microsoft but the innovation done at Microsoft is somewhat disappointing. It could be so much more.
The way for Microsoft to stop google from controlling everything is to open up more than google does, to embrace the services provided by others.
Good business partners add value and I think Microsoft understands this better than anyone else.
Google’s strategy: we need to control as much as possible. The more services we offer, the better, this gives the user more choice.
But it also locks them in and it kills the competition, perhaps even the user’s business. But we don’t care. We want more power.
When necessary we open up, this takes the power away from the user.
They don’t say it out loud but they divide & conquer.
The internet was supposed to give more power to the user.
But Google does exactly the opposite. They take the power away from the user. And I guess some people realize this is happening but there’s very little they do about it. It’s like global warming.
Aware of what’s happening you continue to drive your car.
I’m gonna make sure my next car uses less than the one I have right now and I’m gonna limit the use of google’s services.
Oh and I think Microsoft needs to buy 37signals.
To Marissa Mayer, What happened to google health… ??
“What about covering the Google groups which is the No:1 source of spam to the Usenet. Google is literally destroying Newsgroups.
In my opinion the Worst Evil things Google do are Google Groups and Google pages ( Home of thousands of Spam/Scam sites.”
Are you joking? Did you just get your first net account yesterday? I’ve been on usenet almost 20 years now, and Google did nothing to make it the spam monster it is today. The nature of the protocols governing usenet first of all make it impossible to stop spam, much worse than open-relay SMTP servers. Secondly, Google’s acquisition of DejaNews and reconstruction of the public usenet archives going back to the early 80s was a TREMENDOUS public service, preserving history that would have been lost forever on old DAT tapes.
The Google bashing on this site is getting old, it seems like grasping at straws. Facebook, for example, was founded on the theft of an idea from someone else. Lots of junk Web2.0 companies collect user passwords and scrape other sites violating ToS. That’s what I call evil.
Google’s crime is simply being successful, and it’s still a small company compared to MS. Did Google conspire to “bundle” like MS, strong arming OEMings? Do they produce evil strategy documents like the Halloween documents? Do they join standards committees merely to gum them up? Are they resisting standards like ODF in favor of crappy locked in formats like OOXML by bribing UN/ISO officials? Attempts to block governments from switching to Linux, attempts to block OLTC using Linux, IE4-7 crapping all over web standards for years, threating Linux with patents, and on and on. I mean jesus, we have court documents with MS internal emails, and leaked MS documents showing how “evil” they are, we have nothing like this on Google.
I don’t think Google’s perfect, but if I were to sort Fortune-1000 companies and most Valley companies by evilness, they would certainly be lower on the list than most.
Google is evil to me, their Google toolbar and desktop search is everywhere when you want to download something, I absolutely hate these things.
Yes, Google has moved beyond the threshold of evil. They’ve brainwashed a whole generation of young educated people into drones by feeding them and treating them with lots of comps, while going after all of the major players on the web. Very Microsoft 2.0. I think Google’s best days are behind it.
The biggest problem google with google is simply they dont give a s*** about their small customers. Anyone who used adsense and ran into problems probably had experience with their automated replies and general “we can do what we want” attituted. I had around adsense account with 15k $ banned because i was using “double account”. And for every explanation or question i had afterwards, i got automated reply…
The ‘Don’t Be Evil’ motto which Google gleefully promoted over these past few years has now become an albatross around their throats.
They should really come out now and say it was just a company soundbite at that time and was never intended to be a long term company slogan.
Just as Companies like Coke, or Apple use different slogans each new generation, perhaps Google should look at ways in trying to introduce a new slogan that represents a newer version of their ‘Don’t Be Evil’ greed.
Any suggestions?
Anyone who thinks not being evil is something that is hard to do, should really be put to sleep.
how about “be evil” ?
Google has gotten FAR to much power over our data, and it’s increasing daily, which is becoming very dangerous for a big number of reasons.
I don’t use Google products anymore and suggest to think about it, as well.
I feel Marissa’s statement is being overanalyzed here..
hmmm, it sounds good but is quite negative expression.
Great discussion about Good, Evil, and Google. To be fair to Google and Marissa Mayer, a link to the source of the TechCrunch post – an interview published today in The Sydney Morning Herald – provides much-needed context:
http://www.smh....8025168177.html
Not to mention a great photo of Marissa Mayer.
It’s interesting no one on this thread has brought up Google’s “evil” imitation of FREE411, w/ Goog411.
Cringely has a write-up on it here:
The Next Microsoft: Google is learning too well from the master.
http://www.pbs....102_003354.html
They lean more and more to the dark side the more employees that they have who don’t own boatloads of stock. Think about it, you work in the same position as someone who is a millionaire, bound to be some tension and money grubbing going on somewhere.
And then we saw that Non-Compete they made the Double Clickers sign. Enforceable or not… that was evil.
“First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement so I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirate’s code to apply and you’re not. And thirdly, the code is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules. ”
Really, this blog is like a reality show with some of the comments and editing of what goes on. Read the quote as a whole rather for context like any educated person would.
The motto is just a PR mechanism, some story to tell. To @Jack’s point, Marissa’s statement is probably being overanalyzed, but can you imagine her making the same statement 5 years ago? There was no ambiguity then, but nowadays….
I see a funny similarity to George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, when the pigs start explaining things a bit differently over the course of time. The story progressively changes to accommodate the needs/desires of the pigs.
I see motivated employees looking for creative ways to increase shareholder value, and the places where those opportunities exist run head-long into the “do no evil” motto. It’s business, but desire/greed is human nature. The Googlers aren’t any less susceptible to this than the folks in Redmond.
Let’s not expect them to be perfect, but don’t expect angels with halos, either.
What is this place? A tabloid like ValleyWag?
All companies are evil, but some are more evil than others.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
The bottom line is Google is the “least evil” corporate company we’ve seen in a loooooooong time. I’ve been partners with them on three content companies and they have been amazing partners. They call when they don’t have to, they offer new products and services constantly, and if you’re not happy they pull out all the stops.
I think folks need to consider the source more often when they hear “google is now evil” accusations. Is it an SEO who had their site removed saying this? Is it a company like PayPerPost that was based on hidden paid links and deception saying this?
Google is big, powerful, and rich now… when they do little things it can have big effects. Evil? Well, that would imply intent to do something bad in my mind and I think that’s is not often the case.
Even in the case of KNOL, which content providers are really scared about, is Google being evil or are they just not realizing how encroaching the project is to publishers?! I think the latter… sometime folks at big companies don’t realize how big their actions can seem. When we did Netscape/Propeller I never thought folks would react to it as “Calacanis/AOL is trying to destroy digg” but some did. Of course, when you have multibillion dollar TimeWarner behind you folks let their minds go crazy… what if AOL/TW put Netscape vote buttons everywhere?!?!?! (i wish you could have that support).
Anyway, Google is great… I’m a happy partner.
great comment Jason!
SEo is getting philosophical, that’s the problem. All SEO are philosophers, analysing this from philosophy we can say a lot, but in reality, signs and symbols available on Google and Google as a mediator is great, not only for the partner but for the users also!
@Jason
Bottom line – you are afraid of them! (like everybody else)
As so often Evil its also a question of size… i agreed that people at Google go around thinking what business can destroy or what site will they will aim at but when you are creating new stuff or when you are so DOMINANT you will tend to warm other business and disrupted them thus creating malcontent beings…. i know everytime i hear of change in GG results i tend lose my sleep but somedays the changes are also for the better … so maybe some times Google is more like an Angel than a Demon doing too much Go-o-d ?
I get confused on the “evil story” when aggregators start competing with their partners. And no, I’m not a communist.
Think Microsoft Windows then Internet Explorer.
Think Comcast then CN8/VoD.
Think (insert phone carrier here) then making it impossible to find services like google.
I heard a rumor that Google will create a wikipedia-like site to steal traffic from Wikipedia.
Still working on that …., but I’m still a big fan of Google. I think they have done a great job overall.
I have followed Google for a long time, and I can honestly say I don’t know of a single thing they do which is evil, except one.
When they hint at other companies violating AntiTrust law, or they try to get the government to add restrictions to bandwidth auctions. Just because the masses want free bandwidth, doesn’t make the quest for such a thing gallant. If AT&T outbids Google for bandwidth, it should be allowed to do anything it likes with that bandwidth, including burying it. This is America Google, and property rights exist whether you support them or not. Communism doesn’t sound evil either, but in practise it’s all kinds of evil. Remember, the WORST evils are commited by do-gooders in the name of altruism.
Evil, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. But it wouldn’t have been as effective to say, “We’ll try to be as good as we can.” Don’t be evil has a certain ring to it.
I know you never will, but at least try to lighten up a little, will you?
I work at Google. We’re very proud of Don’t Be Evil, and we wouldn’t change it is we could. The only “frustration” we feel is when members of the press or public loudly proclaim “evil!” when what they really mean is “I didn’t personally like/agree with that decision” or even “I assume everyone is really nefarious and greedy, and so even though this thing Google is doing _looks_ good, I’m sure they must have ulterior motives”.
In that sense, “Don’t Be Evil” becomes some kind of hammer used to bash Google over the head whether or not it’s actually doing anything wrong. I wish people would reserve judgment for the times when we truly screw up.