Its popular culture to believe that Google are the guys in shinning white armour whom are taking on the mega-bad company (that you all made rich by going with the herd). Maybe I get it, one day I’ll be RAD, in touch with the common person, take a skateboard to work to my own board meeting.

Google Earth, now how did these guys come up with that one? Hmmm, these are really smart fellows they’ve got working for them. They must have come up with that one. I mean, they got some kind of prize for that in 2004 didn’t they?

Trusting in someone whom rides a skateboard isn’t the same as trusting someone whom trades it in for a jumbo jet. There is always someone somewhere looking for a new algorithm. It ain’t google yet - sorry, misspelt that too

Yep, we are all young once and make mistakes. I trusted one of my older brothers whom enjoyed fishing. I tried it and took his advice on the best way to kill a fish; smash it against the rocks. Took me another twenty years before I thought about that again. You feel more for life with age.

Of all possible scenarios, this 21st world is the worst. Arrogance with willful ignorance. Will the Star Trek enterprise of the future with its healthy and morally good idealists be contacting new civilisations with the none-ET hens cooked up on level 2?

Good luck
Ken Murray

Wrong. Because of Google’s share structure, Larry and Sergey cannot be outvoted by shareholders. They have the majority of the votes and can completely control the direction of the company.

Best.
alain
http://www.morphexchange.com

“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.”

Of course they do…the last time they checked, you were still Jason Calacanis, weren’t you - not some run-of-the-mill nobody webmaster having that webmaster’s usual obscure run-of-the-mill problems.

Try being a comparatively broke/unknown person with sites to run and AdSense to sell and see how far you get with it - no, really. Thousands of us could tell you stories. Google does not answer our emails and certainly doesn’t go out of their way (ha!) to “contact us first”. Google does NOT do what *we* want them to do. So we bend to them or we die. And sometimes even bending for them isn’t enough - you still get blacklisted like I was years ago, and penalized at every turn, like I still am today. And they don’t want explanations about this or that or the other thing from nobodys like me… they don’t care, since I and most of us on the Web today are nobodys anyway. What do we matter to the big multi-billion dollar corporation? The biggest joke going about Google Customer Service, Jason? That there is none *drumroll*

Then in walks Jason Calacanis dripping money and web celebrity and of course they’re going to kiss your a**. How else would you expect it to play out? You NOT having a good experience - seriously? Impossible.

–your guardian imp

While I don’t think that should be a literal response, I can’t figure out why a lot of people seem to think you have to be evil to make a profit or provide services to the world. Seems to me that a lot of people are confusing “evil” with anything that goes against personal desires.

A lot of (in my opinion flawed) view points seem to start with if Google competes in a new field and puts another company out of business then they must have targeted that company for extinction. But in reality simply competing with someone else is not evil.

Take the example above of Google trying to make Wikipedia extinct. When in actuality their public statement is that they were trying to solve a credibility flaw in the Wikipedia system and they figured they could do a better job of making that happen building from the ground up with credibility designed in before the first article gets published.

Seems like there are a lot of similar arguments where people say Google is evil because they want to branch out of simple search.

Remember their overall master plan was “can we index the entirety of human knowledge”. Making an effort to do that is not evil. And even experimenting with ways to make money off that index is not evil. If you are going to index the world you need to stay alive long enough to do it.

To me, thats the whole point of a motto like that - a statement that you will put moral concerns ahead of your bottom line. Its too bad they stopped living up to the promise, I really liked Google at one time.

RE “‘Don’t Be Evil’ becomes some kind of hammer used to bash Google over the head.”

But who put the hammer there? Or who let someone put it there and liked it when the hammer was facing out, but not so much when it inevitably gets turned around. That’s why a slogan like that is dangerous (It’s good to be dangerous sometimes, but got to quit while ahead). Can’t only like it when it’s convenient. But I hear you. But I also think Google has way too much market share in many, many markets. But you guys do have some great products and services too, so definately keep up the good work.

PS: “Don’t Be Evil” had a good run, but time for a new one. Here’s my nomination: “We’re Google, so f*ck off!”

;P nmw