Comment by neilv

3 years ago

When Google was first starting, savvy techies were aware of aggressive sociopath companies (e.g., Microsoft), and also that Google would probably be very powerful.

Maybe Google had some of that savvy and that's why they instituted "Don't Be Evil".

With all the supposedly smart people and resources that Google has, you'd think they could somehow figure out how not to be the cause of marginalizing people while dismissing them as "edge cases".

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neilv

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acdha  3 years ago

Google seemed to change around the time they bought DoubleClick. That was around the time they stopped making anything new which was good, because they stopped making products which the people who worked there personally wanted to use and started making products which they needed to sell ads.

I’m sure that you don’t see people looking out for users for the simple reason that the money guys won and the way you get rewarded is by viewing your customers as cattle.

CatWChainsaw  3 years ago

"Don't be evil" was /killedbygoogle too :)

  • thinkingemote  3 years ago

    In a somewhat underhand way, they removed the motto from the company and moved it onto their employees. Something like "Googlers shouldn't do evil". I'm sure HR and the legal teams preferred this shift from corporate mission to employee guideline. This might or might not be completely unconnected with subsequent high profile stories of Google employees being sacked on ethical, labor organisation and culture war grounds.

    Its possible there's more of a business reason. Was it in response to censorship in repressive countries, or a response to concern about tracking, data etc.