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It's important for Jobs to convince the rank-and-file at Apple that Google's "Don't Be Evil" is bullshit. Right now it looks an awful lot like Apple is being c

It's important for Jobs to convince the rank-and-file at Apple that Google's "Don't Be Evil" is bullshit. Right now it looks an awful lot like Apple is being closed and evil, while Google is being open and excellent with Android apps. If that perception continues, Apple loses recruiting access to a lot of the best developers.

ynniv 17y ago
Not allowing third parties access to your walled garden is hardly in the same ballpark of possible evil as having access to all of your personal communications. In the worst case of Apple being evil, you can't run Bob's cool software without buying another (non-Apple) device. The worst case of Google being evil is that you go to jail (or worse depending on where you live). And yes, people have gone to jail based on searching Google [1][2]. Please keep some perspective. [1 | http://www.slaw.ca/2005/11/14/google-searches-used-in-evidence http://www.slaw.ca/2005/11/14/google-searches-used-in-eviden... ] [2 | http://www.boingboing.net/2006/12/26/wireless_hacker_plea.html http://www.boingboing.net/2006/12/26/wireless_hacker_plea.ht... ] ADDENDUM: Yes, the evidence in these cases was not provided by Google. No, that does not discredit my statement. The point is that the business Google is in has far more capacity for "evil" than the business Apple is in. Some comments have pointed out that Apple could have backdoors in their software that would allow them to be equally evil. While that is technically possible it would be easily detectable using network monitoring tools, and no one has found one. On the other hand, we have no idea how Google uses the data they have on us. They claim to play nice, but there is no way that anyone could verify this, and it could change retro-actively at any moment.
- angelbob 17y ago
  I agree that Google's scope of possible evil is much more significant. But this is really all about perception, not reality. What Steve Jobs says at an internal Apple employee meeting isn't going to truly change Apple, but it may change how the employees view their company.
  - ynniv 17y ago
    The way I see it, he's blowing off some steam around friends. The man is peerless (and has yet to name a successor), and has his '60s ideals at heart. He is right to call a slogan like "Don't be evil" bullshit when it comes from an ambitious public company that makes all of their money selling ads (targeted by mining collected private data) on a "free" service. "Organizing the world's data," is appropriate, but no company can say honestly say "Don't be evil." At least with Apple you know what you're getting, and you know what it costs.
    - philwelch 17y ago
      There's good reason he has yet to publicly name a successor--when you publicly name a successor, the successor gets all anxious to take over and people start expecting you to step aside in the near future. If you don't believe me, ask Jay Leno or Brett Favre.
- cookiecaper 17y ago
  You don't think Apple has access to that kind of info on people? Have you heard of MobileMe? There's plenty of opportunity for Apple to do the same works. They may not have data on as many people, but it's just the nature of their business. I think that Google has a pretty decent track record with that kind of thing. In both of the examples you posted, the evidence was [probably, in the last case; the article is ambiguous] retrieved from the accused's computer's history and/or cache, not Google itself.
  - ynniv 17y ago
    > Have you heard of MobileMe? MobileMe is paid up front, and not ad supported. There is no collection of private data for the purposes of targeting ads, and your actions are not correlated to your search history, or any website that uses AdSense or DoubleClick. Your email may be on their servers, but it is not connected to a tangled net of tracking information that follows you everywhere that you go. Maybe Apple could add these things, but their business model has been for the customer to pay for their service up front, not for them to find creative ways to monetize any personal information they might have. They did recently purchase Quattro Wireless for mobile advertising, but they say this is to provide a framework for iPhone developers to include ads in their apps. It's probably a competitive play to get developers to not use Google ads.
    - cookiecaper 17y ago
      MobileMe still gives them a pretty extensive network of information about you ... all of your emails, contacts, etc. Google might track more, but you have no evidence to support a postulation that we should fear for its evilness. I agree that we should try to break the monopolies where Google has them, but they've been friendly heretofore. And MobileMe isn't Apple's only source, it's just the most directly analogous to Google's data, but as pointed out above, all of Apple's offerings are closed-source and at least on the iPhone you have no idea how often Apple is pinging your phone or what data they're sending back. They have plenty of opportunity to gather even _more_ data than Google. I don't think the "paid up front" thing matters very much, either. I would be surprised if Apple wasn't after the same kind of profiling that Google performs insofar as it has adequate data on a group of users. The same information that advertisers want (that Google automatically applies to their ads) so that they know what to sell you, Apple wants so that it knows what to sell you.
- haberman 17y ago
  From your first link: "Google’s press office did not respond Friday to an email inquiry about the case, but a lawyer standing by for Petrick said he believes the evidence was all culled from the hard drives and he has no information that Google participated in the investigation." So this shows Google's "evilness" about as much as it shows the evilness of the browser and OS the guy was using. Speaking of which, as the company that writes the OS and Mail.app, doesn't Apple have just as much access to personal communications for its users as Google does? How do you know that the OS and mail programs don't have back doors that can be used whenever it's required? You can't even get root on your own iPhone (unless you jailbreak it), so in a very real way they have more control over you own device than you do. How can you be sure that it's not beaming your GPS coordinates to [insert evil institution here] all the time? You know when you're sending information to Google, but Apple controls closed-source software running on a location-aware personal device with a microphone on it that people carry around all the time.
  - ynniv 17y ago
    So this shows Google's "evilness" about as much as it shows the evilness of the browser and OS the guy was using. Enabling private browsing eliminates local browser history. There is no such recourse for server-side tracking. Even turning off cookies (and Flash [1]) won't stop that [2]. Apple controls closed-source software running on a location-aware personal device with a microphone on it that people carry around all the time. There is merit to your accusation in that there is no way to monitor network traffic over 3G to verify that audio is not transmitted. However, all cell phones allow basic geo-location via triangulation (most carriers lie about that), so if you don't want to be found you shouldn't have a cell phone at all. [1 | http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cookies-think-again/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cook...] [2 | http://panopticlick.eff.org http://panopticlick.eff.org]
    - kiiski 17y ago
      "However, all cell phones allow basic geo-location via triangulation (most carriers lie about that), so if you don't want to be found you shouldn't have a cell phone at all." It is technically possible for all web pages to track your activity there, so if you don't want to be tracked you shouldn't be using the web at all.
- rw 17y ago
  Capacity for harm != actual harm done. To play Devil's advocate: The United States controls over five thousand thermonuclear missiles. Sudan controls none. So what country has been more evil in the last decade? It's important to acknowledge, too, that Google likely has more blackmail-able information on us than the FBI.
  - DannoHung 17y ago
    Your analogy is confusing. Thermonuclear weapons have nothing to do with morality.
    - rw 17y ago
      It's about capacity for harm.
  - m_eiman 17y ago
    So what country has been more evil in the last decade? That probably depends on who you're asking.
  - fnid2 17y ago
    Probably the united states. They've killed millions of people around the world in the last decade. If you don't limit it to the last decade, it's even worse.
    - rw 17y ago
      Yeah. It's not the crispest distinction to make. But, note that the U.S. has also helped a whole lot of people. a - b = c Being utilitarian about it, which country has done better in the last decade?
      - derefr 17y ago
        Being utilitarian about it, India or China is ahead no matter what, because of all of those little sacks of utility known as "babies" they've produced. ;)
- ArcticCelt 17y ago
  No need to prove that Apple is evil or not, that's Google claim not Apple one. Apple claim to be original and sophisticated not that they are the next mother Theresa, they fully embrace the fact that they are a business and don't pretend otherwise.
karzeem 17y ago
There are plenty of developers who'd rather work on Android, since it's much more open than iPhone OS. But I'd bet there are equally many developers who'd rather work on iPhone OS because they feel it's the better OS. Apple gets the developers for whom the closed vs. open debate is far less important than the better vs. worse debate. (Corollary: those tend to be people who do not always grant better-until-proven-worse status to openness.)
lucifer 17y ago
Producing closed product ecosystems is hardly "evil". Don't like it, don't buy/support it. (Now try getting away from the Google surveillance system on the web. Can you opt out?)
- sorbus 17y ago
  Yes, you can; just block all of Google's known IP blocks in /etc/hosts.deny, or send all their domains to 127.0.0.1 in /etc/hosts A bit more than the average user can manage, and not so good as actually opting out (in the sense of getting Google to throw away all of their records on you), but you always have complete control of which pages your computer will load.
cabalamat 17y ago
> If that perception continues, Apple loses recruiting access to a lot of the best developers. I certainly consider Google to be a more ethical company than Apple. Currently, I own neither an iPhone or an Android phone; if I did get one it would be the Android because it is more open. If I did have an Android, it's quite likely I would develop software on it. On the desktop, I currently use a Linux box. I've considered getting a Mac; several of my friends have them. But the locked-down nature of the iPhone and iPad deter me from buying any of their products. So Apple has certainly lost me as a potential customer, due to my perception of them being evil. Do they care? Probably not. However, if lots of programmers think like me, the software ecosystem around their product will suffer.
- protomyth 17y ago
  Apple never blocked calls to a Tribal community college or a nunnery, but Google did.
  - sorbus 17y ago
    According to [1], it was because the costs of connecting are too high. Since Google voice is a free service, I (at least) see no issue with it; you get what you pay for. However, saying that Apple never did that while Google did makes no sense; Apple isn't a service provider, while Google is, in this case. It makes just as much sense to say that Google never required their devices to be jailbroken to be user-controllable, while Apple did - or that Google never said that jailbreaking was illegal, while Apple did. [1] http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/66661-pressure-on-google-over-blocked-calls http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/66661-pressure-on...
    - protomyth 17y ago
      Does Google Voice say, "we don't want to pay a connection fee" or does it just block the call? Was Google open about blocking certain people? I think if they cost one person a job or internship because of blocked calls, that qualifies as "evil". I find it funny that AT&T had to figure out who was getting blocked and how sloppy Google was doing it (Google was blocking more numbers then they had to to avoid the fee). I'm glad that you are unaffected by such things, tis a shame for other people.
tvon 17y ago
"Closed" has nothing to do with "evil".
- jacquesm 17y ago
  That depends. Closed doesn't have to be 'evil', but open almost never is. So even if there isn't a 1:1 correspondence between the two you'll be finding 'evil' (lock in, proprietary protocols, overpriced hardware and so on) invariably when stuff is closed. But of course there are manufacturers of closed source that do not do 'lock-in', that open up their interface layers and protocols and that price their hardware reasonably.
  - tvon 17y ago
    True, true. edit: I really just have a nitpick with the tossing around of the term "evil". It's almost as if Godwin's Law should adapt to cover not only Nazi comparisons, but also absolutes of morality.
otakucode 17y ago
Please keep in mind that Google IS presently the world largest censor. It's pretty clear that they only avoid doing evil when it is not financially incentivized. Apple is just being stupid and shortsighted, especially with the iPad. An open market alongside their closed one would boost them both. It's clear that Google realizes this as a point of business, and I think given their other actions it's clear that they are doing it for those reasons and not to avoid evil.
- jganetsk 17y ago
  Please keep in mind that Google IS presently the world largest censor. I thank that honor goes to the Chinese government. Google isn't the one that's actually blocking any access to sites.

ynniv 17y ago

Not allowing third parties access to your walled garden is hardly in the same ballpark of possible evil as having access to all of your personal communications. In the worst case of Apple being evil, you can't run Bob's cool software without buying another (non-Apple) device. The worst case of Google being evil is that you go to jail (or worse depending on where you live). And yes, people have gone to jail based on searching Google [1][2]. Please keep some perspective. [1 | http://www.slaw.ca/2005/11/14/google-searches-used-in-evidence http://www.slaw.ca/2005/11/14/google-searches-used-in-eviden... ] [2 | http://www.boingboing.net/2006/12/26/wireless_hacker_plea.html http://www.boingboing.net/2006/12/26/wireless_hacker_plea.ht... ] ADDENDUM: Yes, the evidence in these cases was not provided by Google. No, that does not discredit my statement. The point is that the business Google is in has far more capacity for "evil" than the business Apple is in. Some comments have pointed out that Apple could have backdoors in their software that would allow them to be equally evil. While that is technically possible it would be easily detectable using network monitoring tools, and no one has found one. On the other hand, we have no idea how Google uses the data they have on us. They claim to play nice, but there is no way that anyone could verify this, and it could change retro-actively at any moment.

angelbob 17y ago
I agree that Google's scope of possible evil is much more significant. But this is really all about perception, not reality. What Steve Jobs says at an internal Apple employee meeting isn't going to truly change Apple, but it may change how the employees view their company.
- ynniv 17y ago
  The way I see it, he's blowing off some steam around friends. The man is peerless (and has yet to name a successor), and has his '60s ideals at heart. He is right to call a slogan like "Don't be evil" bullshit when it comes from an ambitious public company that makes all of their money selling ads (targeted by mining collected private data) on a "free" service. "Organizing the world's data," is appropriate, but no company can say honestly say "Don't be evil." At least with Apple you know what you're getting, and you know what it costs.
  - philwelch 17y ago
    There's good reason he has yet to publicly name a successor--when you publicly name a successor, the successor gets all anxious to take over and people start expecting you to step aside in the near future. If you don't believe me, ask Jay Leno or Brett Favre.
cookiecaper 17y ago
You don't think Apple has access to that kind of info on people? Have you heard of MobileMe? There's plenty of opportunity for Apple to do the same works. They may not have data on as many people, but it's just the nature of their business. I think that Google has a pretty decent track record with that kind of thing. In both of the examples you posted, the evidence was [probably, in the last case; the article is ambiguous] retrieved from the accused's computer's history and/or cache, not Google itself.
- ynniv 17y ago
  > Have you heard of MobileMe? MobileMe is paid up front, and not ad supported. There is no collection of private data for the purposes of targeting ads, and your actions are not correlated to your search history, or any website that uses AdSense or DoubleClick. Your email may be on their servers, but it is not connected to a tangled net of tracking information that follows you everywhere that you go. Maybe Apple could add these things, but their business model has been for the customer to pay for their service up front, not for them to find creative ways to monetize any personal information they might have. They did recently purchase Quattro Wireless for mobile advertising, but they say this is to provide a framework for iPhone developers to include ads in their apps. It's probably a competitive play to get developers to not use Google ads.
  - cookiecaper 17y ago
    MobileMe still gives them a pretty extensive network of information about you ... all of your emails, contacts, etc. Google might track more, but you have no evidence to support a postulation that we should fear for its evilness. I agree that we should try to break the monopolies where Google has them, but they've been friendly heretofore. And MobileMe isn't Apple's only source, it's just the most directly analogous to Google's data, but as pointed out above, all of Apple's offerings are closed-source and at least on the iPhone you have no idea how often Apple is pinging your phone or what data they're sending back. They have plenty of opportunity to gather even _more_ data than Google. I don't think the "paid up front" thing matters very much, either. I would be surprised if Apple wasn't after the same kind of profiling that Google performs insofar as it has adequate data on a group of users. The same information that advertisers want (that Google automatically applies to their ads) so that they know what to sell you, Apple wants so that it knows what to sell you.
haberman 17y ago
From your first link: "Google’s press office did not respond Friday to an email inquiry about the case, but a lawyer standing by for Petrick said he believes the evidence was all culled from the hard drives and he has no information that Google participated in the investigation." So this shows Google's "evilness" about as much as it shows the evilness of the browser and OS the guy was using. Speaking of which, as the company that writes the OS and Mail.app, doesn't Apple have just as much access to personal communications for its users as Google does? How do you know that the OS and mail programs don't have back doors that can be used whenever it's required? You can't even get root on your own iPhone (unless you jailbreak it), so in a very real way they have more control over you own device than you do. How can you be sure that it's not beaming your GPS coordinates to [insert evil institution here] all the time? You know when you're sending information to Google, but Apple controls closed-source software running on a location-aware personal device with a microphone on it that people carry around all the time.
- ynniv 17y ago
  So this shows Google's "evilness" about as much as it shows the evilness of the browser and OS the guy was using. Enabling private browsing eliminates local browser history. There is no such recourse for server-side tracking. Even turning off cookies (and Flash [1]) won't stop that [2]. Apple controls closed-source software running on a location-aware personal device with a microphone on it that people carry around all the time. There is merit to your accusation in that there is no way to monitor network traffic over 3G to verify that audio is not transmitted. However, all cell phones allow basic geo-location via triangulation (most carriers lie about that), so if you don't want to be found you shouldn't have a cell phone at all. [1 | http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cookies-think-again/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cook...] [2 | http://panopticlick.eff.org http://panopticlick.eff.org]
  - kiiski 17y ago
    "However, all cell phones allow basic geo-location via triangulation (most carriers lie about that), so if you don't want to be found you shouldn't have a cell phone at all." It is technically possible for all web pages to track your activity there, so if you don't want to be tracked you shouldn't be using the web at all.
rw 17y ago
Capacity for harm != actual harm done. To play Devil's advocate: The United States controls over five thousand thermonuclear missiles. Sudan controls none. So what country has been more evil in the last decade? It's important to acknowledge, too, that Google likely has more blackmail-able information on us than the FBI.
- DannoHung 17y ago
  Your analogy is confusing. Thermonuclear weapons have nothing to do with morality.
  - rw 17y ago
    It's about capacity for harm.
- m_eiman 17y ago
  So what country has been more evil in the last decade? That probably depends on who you're asking.
- fnid2 17y ago
  Probably the united states. They've killed millions of people around the world in the last decade. If you don't limit it to the last decade, it's even worse.
  - rw 17y ago
    Yeah. It's not the crispest distinction to make. But, note that the U.S. has also helped a whole lot of people. a - b = c Being utilitarian about it, which country has done better in the last decade?
    - derefr 17y ago
      Being utilitarian about it, India or China is ahead no matter what, because of all of those little sacks of utility known as "babies" they've produced. ;)
ArcticCelt 17y ago
No need to prove that Apple is evil or not, that's Google claim not Apple one. Apple claim to be original and sophisticated not that they are the next mother Theresa, they fully embrace the fact that they are a business and don't pretend otherwise.

karzeem 17y ago

There are plenty of developers who'd rather work on Android, since it's much more open than iPhone OS. But I'd bet there are equally many developers who'd rather work on iPhone OS because they feel it's the better OS. Apple gets the developers for whom the closed vs. open debate is far less important than the better vs. worse debate. (Corollary: those tend to be people who do not always grant better-until-proven-worse status to openness.)

lucifer 17y ago

Producing closed product ecosystems is hardly "evil". Don't like it, don't buy/support it. (Now try getting away from the Google surveillance system on the web. Can you opt out?)

sorbus 17y ago
Yes, you can; just block all of Google's known IP blocks in /etc/hosts.deny, or send all their domains to 127.0.0.1 in /etc/hosts A bit more than the average user can manage, and not so good as actually opting out (in the sense of getting Google to throw away all of their records on you), but you always have complete control of which pages your computer will load.

cabalamat 17y ago

> If that perception continues, Apple loses recruiting access to a lot of the best developers. I certainly consider Google to be a more ethical company than Apple. Currently, I own neither an iPhone or an Android phone; if I did get one it would be the Android because it is more open. If I did have an Android, it's quite likely I would develop software on it. On the desktop, I currently use a Linux box. I've considered getting a Mac; several of my friends have them. But the locked-down nature of the iPhone and iPad deter me from buying any of their products. So Apple has certainly lost me as a potential customer, due to my perception of them being evil. Do they care? Probably not. However, if lots of programmers think like me, the software ecosystem around their product will suffer.

protomyth 17y ago
Apple never blocked calls to a Tribal community college or a nunnery, but Google did.
- sorbus 17y ago
  According to [1], it was because the costs of connecting are too high. Since Google voice is a free service, I (at least) see no issue with it; you get what you pay for. However, saying that Apple never did that while Google did makes no sense; Apple isn't a service provider, while Google is, in this case. It makes just as much sense to say that Google never required their devices to be jailbroken to be user-controllable, while Apple did - or that Google never said that jailbreaking was illegal, while Apple did. [1] http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/66661-pressure-on-google-over-blocked-calls http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/66661-pressure-on...
  - protomyth 17y ago
    Does Google Voice say, "we don't want to pay a connection fee" or does it just block the call? Was Google open about blocking certain people? I think if they cost one person a job or internship because of blocked calls, that qualifies as "evil". I find it funny that AT&T had to figure out who was getting blocked and how sloppy Google was doing it (Google was blocking more numbers then they had to to avoid the fee). I'm glad that you are unaffected by such things, tis a shame for other people.

tvon 17y ago

"Closed" has nothing to do with "evil".

jacquesm 17y ago
That depends. Closed doesn't have to be 'evil', but open almost never is. So even if there isn't a 1:1 correspondence between the two you'll be finding 'evil' (lock in, proprietary protocols, overpriced hardware and so on) invariably when stuff is closed. But of course there are manufacturers of closed source that do not do 'lock-in', that open up their interface layers and protocols and that price their hardware reasonably.
- tvon 17y ago
  True, true. edit: I really just have a nitpick with the tossing around of the term "evil". It's almost as if Godwin's Law should adapt to cover not only Nazi comparisons, but also absolutes of morality.

otakucode 17y ago

Please keep in mind that Google IS presently the world largest censor. It's pretty clear that they only avoid doing evil when it is not financially incentivized. Apple is just being stupid and shortsighted, especially with the iPad. An open market alongside their closed one would boost them both. It's clear that Google realizes this as a point of business, and I think given their other actions it's clear that they are doing it for those reasons and not to avoid evil.

jganetsk 17y ago
Please keep in mind that Google IS presently the world largest censor. I thank that honor goes to the Chinese government. Google isn't the one that's actually blocking any access to sites.