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Ex-Google workers sue company, saying it betrayed 'Don't Be Evil' motto

285 points by authed 5y ago

MisterBastahrd 5y ago
Being evil isn't illegal. See: Washington, District of Columbia
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  It's a contract matter, they promised they wouldn't be.
  - sigzero 5y ago
    A motto is not in any way, shape, or form "a contract".
    - mewse 5y ago
      What about when it’s in your employment contract that you can be fired for “being evil”, and that you’re expected to speak up if you perceive the company “doing evil”, and then you’re terminated for speaking up over perceived “evil” actions by the company? Does it form “a contract” then? Because that’s what the suit in the article is alleging, by my reading.
pillowkusis 5y ago
>Google fired the three workers... for "clear and repeated violations" of the company's data security policies. The four deny they accessed and leaked confidential documents... Surely if they can prove they didn't leak anything (or Google can't prove they did), they would have an easy wrongful termination lawsuit? They wouldn't need to sue on these flimsy grounds?
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  If you whistle-blow when your company does "evil" things... and you're fired for being "evil" (company claims whistleblowing is evil) then this could actually be a case with more merit than "that big company is evil but they said they werent" which is how most people are reading the title.
  - whoknowswhat11 5y ago
    In this case a security person appears to have used their position to change chrome for google users to display a message when they visited a website of a contractor google was working with (that was anti-union, the employee presumably being pro-union). This sounds like a stunt someone who hadn't gone to college yet might pull, but this person was a google engineer in a position of trust / authority - not sure how the google hiring process works but she made it in. I mean, no business is going to willing let one employee hijack the browser used by their users to spread a message the company doesn't like. Most businesses make this very clear - you can't use company resource to spread your messages (political, MLM, side hustles, religious etc).
- sct202 5y ago
  The NLRB originally dismissed their claims but this year sort of reversed and said that Google 'arguably violated' labor laws by firing them.
1cvmask 5y ago
Seems Google employees might now have two ways of making money. Once while at Google. And then suing Google after leaving. If they prevail I expect that a lot of other companies will become targets.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> Three former Google employees have sued the company, alleging that Google's motto "Don't be evil" amounts to a contractual obligation that the tech giant has violated. How could anything possibly happen other than getting tossed out of court immediately? They want US courts to adjudicate which acts are and are not "evil"?
- jonas21 5y ago
  I'd also imagine you'd have a pretty hard time convincing a US court that working with a US government agency is "evil."
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > I'd also imagine you'd have a pretty hard time convincing a US court that working with a US government agency is "evil." The case isn't asking a US Court to find that. It is asking a California State Court to find that challenging corporate involvement in a particular federal action on the same moral grounds that the State of California was challenging the underlying federal action at the same time was reasonably either or a combination of (a) within the ambit of an obligation undertaken to raise potential “evil” actions, or (b) legally protected political activity, or (c) legally protected discussion of working conditions. (And there's a couple other things in it that could succeed even if those all fail, notably the slander charge about knowingly false information spread about involvement in public leaks.)
- jldugger 5y ago
  I'm curious how a judge tosses this out. Do they just say "Look, the law has nothing to do with stopping evil, so stop asking us to try"?
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    The law isn't unrelated to stopping evil, but it isn't able to determine what evil is. Whether an act is "evil" is a theological question, so to the extent plaintiffs are actually relying on the word "evil", separation of church and state will prevent the court from even considering their claims.
ALittleLight 5y ago
This reminds me of lawsuit against Amazon because it's not, actually, always Day 1.
JavaBatman 5y ago
The problem with "Don't Be Evil" is that it assumes everyone agrees on what the definition of "evil" is. But that is absolutely not the case. We live in a post-Christian/post-religious society where - aside from the basic human instinct of survival - no one agrees on First Principles. The dominant ideology in society now is Liberalism. And I don't mean American liberalism. I mean actual Liberalism - freedom of speech, expression, assembly, religion, etc. Because of this, there is a diversity of thought and moral relativism, so "evil" means different things to different people. A rural, socially conservative Christian's idea of "evil" will likely be very different than an urban, secular, and progressive definition of "evil." Without a dominant ideology guiding society using a set universal moral code, there will always be conflicts regarding First Principles, different sets of facts, etc.
- chickenpotpie 5y ago
  We definitely don't live in a post-christian/post-religious society. Lawmakers regularly cite the bible and other religious texts when making laws.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  I agree with your point but i'm not sure i agree that people disagree on first principles that much, and i think people mostly pay lip-service to liberalism more than practice and believe it.
- gweinberg 5y ago
  Sure, but there's a huge gap between "we all precisely agree on what 'evil' means and 'nobody has a clue what evil means'. It's pretty unreasonable for somebody to say "I personally think this is evil so I can't be fired for refusing to do it, even though I'm the only one", but it's a lot more reasonable if most people would agree that it is in fact evil. I could see a judgement for the former employees if Google were helping an authoritarian government identify and punish dissidents. Working with US customs? Probably not.
- sophacles 5y ago
  You make a good attempt at joking here, but ultimately fail. Your absurd position: "we live in a post-Crhistian/post-religious society" is just way way too far as an initial gambit. Maybe try toning it down at first? Or alternately going way further at the start. This just hits poe's law too hard.
newaccount2021 5y ago
Sorry Google, you created this farce by coddling these morons and many others like them
DwnVoteHoneyPot 5y ago
I guess other companies now will be wary of adding altruistic goals. No good deeds go unpunished.
- another-dave 5y ago
  In fairness "Don't be evil" isn't really a meaningful goal, it's so vague as to be meaningless. E.g. I'd be surprised if any decision got reversed because it went against it.
b8 5y ago
Well the definition of evil is being immortal and wicked. https://stallman.org/google.html https://stallman.org/google.html has a list of many wicked things that Google has done and there's many others. So maybe they could use some of those things as proof that Google has betrayed the DBE motto. I doubt that anything will come of of this or that a judge won't dismiss this in a quick matter.
scandox 5y ago
Google can easily prove they were evil even at the time they first deployed that corporate motto. It's interesting to me that we fell for this at the time. I mean if someone says to you at a party "I'm a nice guy" well it's obvious they're a bloody monster...but a corporation doing the same thing and early noughties me is like "well that sounds nice".
- deleted 5y ago
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noizejoy 5y ago
It’s actually worth to RTFA, since it gives additional context of employment contracts, activism and firing.
d1a2n 5y ago
[flagged]
- jeremyjh 5y ago
  Why do you need to separate children from their parents - who are seeking political asylum - to "SeCURe TeH bORdER!"
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    because many children are being trafficked by people who aren't their adults.
  - Handstand 5y ago
    I want to be clear that im explicitly against the policy of doing that, but it doesnt look like the person you replied to made any mention of that either.
    - jeremyjh 5y ago
      He said that "leftist activists" objected to a country securing its borders, but that is not what they were objecting to.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  > just leftist whining just rightist whining. Fixed it for you :) jk but why do people feel the need to make political points out of nothing. You could find tons of examples of things that are evil and not just the few things that fit one persons viewpoints.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - deleted 5y ago
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amelius 5y ago
Reminds me of the JSLint case, where the author said "this software can't be used for evil", and then a bunch of lawyers from IBM couldn't figure out what "evil" meant and demanded a change in the license.
slownews45 5y ago
I thought they were fired for somehow getting chrome to pop-up notices when visiting the website of a google contractor that was anti-union. I mean, I like the effort, but... it's unlikely that an employer is going to want to pay employees to do things they don't want to have done? "Her suspension began just three hours after she published a piece of code that created a pop-up notification when Google employees visited the website of IRI Consultants" I'm curious how one even gets chrome to monitor and pop up a notice when google folks visit a website. If it was some kind of ad that seems OK. If she used google's infrastructure to push a popup to all google employees... do other businesses permit this? Can a chase employee push something to all chase.com users alerting them to something they care about?
- tdeck 5y ago
  IIRC they added it to one of the utility extensions that many Google employees install, although I no longer recall which one.
  - slownews45 5y ago
    Fascinating. You'd think you'd have to be in some kind of security type role to be able to do this if they had access / control over an extension on google employee computers. Kind of funny seeing maybe some google naivete and the "do no evil" thing come back to bite google. When I was in high school I had a fair bit of fun going outside the permitted guidelines. By college I'd developed a reasonable sense of boundaries with other folks equipment / jobs with a trust element. If I pushed a pop-up notice out company wide with a message my employer didn't approve of, I'd definitely be expecting to be going out the door rather than doing the litigation process. Having worked a bit in govt interesting to see the NLRB pursue this, in govt my experience was a REDICULOUSLY dim view would be taken of something like this.
    - Eelongate 5y ago
      > If I pushed a pop-up notice out company wide with a message my employer didn't approve of, I'd definitely be expecting to be going out the door rather than doing the litigation process. If it were relating to anything other than labor organization, it would be a no brainer. But there are special legal protections for labor organization, so I not sure it's clear cut in this particular circumstance.
dharmab 5y ago
Relation: The JSLint license has a clause stating that it shall not be used for evil. IBM has obtained a license to be able to use JSLint for evil, presumably to avoid this type of suit: https://youtu.be/-C-JoyNuQJs?t=41m20s https://youtu.be/-C-JoyNuQJs?t=41m20s
Laremere 5y ago
It seems the title is implying that the people suing think Google had an obligation to not be evil because that was its motto. Reading the article, the lawsuit is about something more reasonable: They signed an employee code of conduct which included "Don't Be Evil". They organized a movement within Google in pursuit of contractually obligated motto, and believe they were fired for doing this organizing. Say you were hired as security. You signed a contract stating you wouldn't let anyone enter the building who doesn't have a valid employee id. One day a VP forgets his ID at home, and puts you in a tough spot. Fearing you'd be fired because you violated your contract, you deny the VP access to the building. The VP is mad, and gets revenge on you by getting you fired. In this case, suing the company for following the rules it made you follow seems reasonable. The problem here is "Don't Be Evil" is so vague. I'm unsure it will have enough standing to succeed, but it's not entirely unreasonable.
- henryfjordan 5y ago
  Vagueness is to be construed against the drafter of the contract, Google in this case.
  - nickff 5y ago
    I believe that only applies to contracts of adhesion (in most areas), though this contract may be one of adhesion. The presumption would probably be taken to mean that the employee couldn't be fired 'with cause' for 'being evil', but I don't know how you'd prove Google was 'being evil'. This is tantamount to accusing someone of fraud for saying that they 'were nice', but then not 'being nice'.
    - henryfjordan 5y ago
      I don't think it applies strictly to contracts of adhesion, just contracts where a single party was the drafter of the bad term. This case will not hinge on what the definition of "evil" is, but on whether "don't be evil" was a real term of the contract or some errata in the employee handbook. And even then, the complaint isn't "Google was evil" but rather "Google's handbook said to point out evil when I see it and they fired me for it".
unyttigfjelltol 5y ago
NPR indicates the key substantive issue is whether the workers improperly leaked data. The workers say they didn't, factually, leak data (apparently). The 'Evil' bit would allow the workers to present evidence at trial of the substantive right or wrong of what Google was doing, whereas it's irrelevant to vanilla issues of data security. Attorneys structure complaints like this every day of the week, and it's functioning precisely as intended-- NPR ran an article about 'Evil'.
AlbertCory 5y ago
(Disclaimer: I wasn't there at the very beginning. I joined in Nov. 2005 when the motto was already in place.) The origin of "don't be evil" had nothing to do with politics. It had to do, especially, with selling search placement, which was something that search engines before Google regularly did. Whether you bought ads on Search or not had no bearing on where you came out in the Search results, and you can doubt that all you like but it was true. I'm not AS sure about this one, but another evil practice which inspired the slogan was: giving preference to your own products in search results. Google didn't need to do that back in the day, because it didn't really HAVE any other products. It pretty definitely succumbed to that evil once it had some. If the case is not tossed, the judge will probably construe the term for the jury, similar to how a patent claim is construed. The two sides will fight over the construction, but the judge's ruling will stand. I'm pretty sure he'd construe "don't be evil" by what it meant to Google, and not what the three ex-employees thought. If they were in doubt, they could have asked.
- bborud 5y ago
  While I was there (about a year later) I can remember it being used generally in meetings to judge if something was ethical. I can remember things being nixed (by engineers) for being too “evil”. Some of those things would probably be okay today - now that Mr Zuckerberg has moved the goalposts for how creepy a company can allow itself to get - and everyone must follow or risk losing out.
- titzer 5y ago
  > It had to do, especially, with selling search placement, which was something that search engines before Google regularly did. Whether you bought ads on Search or not had no bearing on where you came out in the Search results, and you can doubt that all you like but it was true. Which, with the slow boil of reducing the yellow background of ads down to next to nothing, then moving them ahead of results, and slowly fading the background to nothing, whittling the little "Ad" chip down to nothing [1], is today exactly what Google is doing. [1] https://www.webprofits.com.au/blog/google-search-change https://www.webprofits.com.au/blog/google-search-change > another evil practice which inspired the slogan was: giving preference to your own products in search results. Which it absolutely does, and did worse (sued in EU over Google shopping results). I joined in 2010. At no point did I ever drink the koolaid that Google would ever really live up to this vague ideal, but I was, at the time, impressed by how ethical and careful the company seemed to be. That completely changed, little by little, and I lost that trust, or rather, that trust was broken and slowly evaporated. Today, Google is a behemoth that will seemingly stop at nothing to keep that 20% YoY gravy train going. It's getting ridiculous. They're paving over cyberspace with ads and gobbling every profitable thing and potential competitor. They won't be stopping the growth mindset. The self deception at the top is staggering. Google is becoming everything the internet never should have been.
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thisisauserid 5y ago
Cute!
mrkramer 5y ago
And what is the definition of evil according to them? Showing ads to users. Then let's sue the whole freaking internet.
Thorentis 5y ago
In the Code of Conduct they signed, was "evil" actually defined? Usually contracts go to great lengths to define every single term that is used, even obvious ones. If "evil" was not defined, then who gets to decide its definition for the purposes of enforcing the contract, the writer, or the signer?
- TheCoelacanth 5y ago
  Ambiguous contract terms are taken to mean whatever is most detrimental to the writer.
mountainb 5y ago
The people who will win this are the lawyers. The plaintiffs will not win.
metta2uall 5y ago
Oh, I thought this was about Google encouraging the rampant consumerism that is causing so much environmental degradation...
bagels 5y ago
The premise of the lawsuit seems flawed. The code of conduct or a motto is not a contract. The code of conduct generally limits the conduct of the employee, and does not create obligations for the company. When "Don't be Evil" is in the code of conduct, it only suggest that the employee should not engage in evil behavior, but doesn't preclude the company from doing so, and doesn't implicitly allow all non-evil behavior by the employee.
- marcinzm 5y ago
  It seems the code of conduct in this case said employees should raise issues to Google. The claim is that google then fired employees for raising issues around google being evil. It has absolutely zero to do with Google actually doing evil or not doing evil.
  - bagels 5y ago
    I don't see in the article that the code of conduct asked employees to call out the company. Maybe you have some other source or have read the complaint? The facts in the article make the suit seem meritless.
karmasimida 5y ago
Is there a valid legal standing to this? I doubt it.
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Manuel_D 5y ago
> The trio say they thought they were behaving in accordance with that principle when they organized Google employees against controversial projects, such as work for U.S. Customs and Border Protection during the Trump administration. The workers circulated a petition calling on Google to publicly commit to not working with CBP. Plenty of people don't subscribe to the belief that it's evil to detain people illegally entering a country. Try overstaying your tourist visa in another country: you'll be arrested, then deported. Same deal with doing Pentagon contracts, as mentioned later in the article. Not everyone subscribes to the belief that any defense-related work is evil. I seriously doubt that this will even be allowed to get to court. This lawsuit seems more like activism than a credible legal challenge.
spaceflunky 5y ago
You'd be surprised how many Google employees have a warped view of the company or even that of what a business is suppose to do. There are some people with the org that would genuinely debate you as to whether making a profit (any kind of profit) is a good or bad thing.
rmah 5y ago
Haha, this is funny. On one hand, I can't help feel a bit of schadenfreude for Google being harassed with this frivolous lawsuit because of their obviously self-indulgent motto. On the other hand, it is a bit sad that the county even accepted such a frivolous lawsuit. On the gripping hand, I don't like the sort of people who pretend to be shocked SHOCKED! that the motto was nothing but a fig leaf. So it's weirdly uncomfortable feelings for me all around.
- thisiswater 5y ago
  While I can't speak to the case, I have anecdotally known PhD-level researchers who have cited "don't be evil" as part of their decisions to trust Google with potentially sensitive data. The phrase has clout. This has been official policy. It seems like more than a motto at that point.
  - rmah 5y ago
    I don't understand how anyone can reach early adulthood and actually take such drivel from a corporation at face value. As you say, clearly such people exist. It just mystifies me.
    - Eelongate 5y ago
      Google was pretty good at making people think Google was different.
tonetheman 5y ago
This appears to morons trying to get money for being morons.
RickJWagner 5y ago
I do think Google does evil things. But not the same things the ex-employees are protesting. I guess it's subjective.
authed 5y ago
Of course this post is getting down-ranked to hell ;)

285 points by authed 5y ago

MisterBastahrd 5y ago

Being evil isn't illegal. See: Washington, District of Columbia

marcosdumay 5y ago
It's a contract matter, they promised they wouldn't be.
- sigzero 5y ago
  A motto is not in any way, shape, or form "a contract".
  - mewse 5y ago
    What about when it’s in your employment contract that you can be fired for “being evil”, and that you’re expected to speak up if you perceive the company “doing evil”, and then you’re terminated for speaking up over perceived “evil” actions by the company? Does it form “a contract” then? Because that’s what the suit in the article is alleging, by my reading.

pillowkusis 5y ago

>Google fired the three workers... for "clear and repeated violations" of the company's data security policies. The four deny they accessed and leaked confidential documents... Surely if they can prove they didn't leak anything (or Google can't prove they did), they would have an easy wrongful termination lawsuit? They wouldn't need to sue on these flimsy grounds?

vineyardmike 5y ago
If you whistle-blow when your company does "evil" things... and you're fired for being "evil" (company claims whistleblowing is evil) then this could actually be a case with more merit than "that big company is evil but they said they werent" which is how most people are reading the title.
- whoknowswhat11 5y ago
  In this case a security person appears to have used their position to change chrome for google users to display a message when they visited a website of a contractor google was working with (that was anti-union, the employee presumably being pro-union). This sounds like a stunt someone who hadn't gone to college yet might pull, but this person was a google engineer in a position of trust / authority - not sure how the google hiring process works but she made it in. I mean, no business is going to willing let one employee hijack the browser used by their users to spread a message the company doesn't like. Most businesses make this very clear - you can't use company resource to spread your messages (political, MLM, side hustles, religious etc).
sct202 5y ago
The NLRB originally dismissed their claims but this year sort of reversed and said that Google 'arguably violated' labor laws by firing them.

1cvmask 5y ago

Seems Google employees might now have two ways of making money. Once while at Google. And then suing Google after leaving. If they prevail I expect that a lot of other companies will become targets.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> Three former Google employees have sued the company, alleging that Google's motto "Don't be evil" amounts to a contractual obligation that the tech giant has violated. How could anything possibly happen other than getting tossed out of court immediately? They want US courts to adjudicate which acts are and are not "evil"?

jonas21 5y ago
I'd also imagine you'd have a pretty hard time convincing a US court that working with a US government agency is "evil."
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I'd also imagine you'd have a pretty hard time convincing a US court that working with a US government agency is "evil." The case isn't asking a US Court to find that. It is asking a California State Court to find that challenging corporate involvement in a particular federal action on the same moral grounds that the State of California was challenging the underlying federal action at the same time was reasonably either or a combination of (a) within the ambit of an obligation undertaken to raise potential “evil” actions, or (b) legally protected political activity, or (c) legally protected discussion of working conditions. (And there's a couple other things in it that could succeed even if those all fail, notably the slander charge about knowingly false information spread about involvement in public leaks.)
jldugger 5y ago
I'm curious how a judge tosses this out. Do they just say "Look, the law has nothing to do with stopping evil, so stop asking us to try"?
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  The law isn't unrelated to stopping evil, but it isn't able to determine what evil is. Whether an act is "evil" is a theological question, so to the extent plaintiffs are actually relying on the word "evil", separation of church and state will prevent the court from even considering their claims.

ALittleLight 5y ago

This reminds me of lawsuit against Amazon because it's not, actually, always Day 1.

JavaBatman 5y ago

The problem with "Don't Be Evil" is that it assumes everyone agrees on what the definition of "evil" is. But that is absolutely not the case. We live in a post-Christian/post-religious society where - aside from the basic human instinct of survival - no one agrees on First Principles. The dominant ideology in society now is Liberalism. And I don't mean American liberalism. I mean actual Liberalism - freedom of speech, expression, assembly, religion, etc. Because of this, there is a diversity of thought and moral relativism, so "evil" means different things to different people. A rural, socially conservative Christian's idea of "evil" will likely be very different than an urban, secular, and progressive definition of "evil." Without a dominant ideology guiding society using a set universal moral code, there will always be conflicts regarding First Principles, different sets of facts, etc.

chickenpotpie 5y ago
We definitely don't live in a post-christian/post-religious society. Lawmakers regularly cite the bible and other religious texts when making laws.
vineyardmike 5y ago
I agree with your point but i'm not sure i agree that people disagree on first principles that much, and i think people mostly pay lip-service to liberalism more than practice and believe it.
gweinberg 5y ago
Sure, but there's a huge gap between "we all precisely agree on what 'evil' means and 'nobody has a clue what evil means'. It's pretty unreasonable for somebody to say "I personally think this is evil so I can't be fired for refusing to do it, even though I'm the only one", but it's a lot more reasonable if most people would agree that it is in fact evil. I could see a judgement for the former employees if Google were helping an authoritarian government identify and punish dissidents. Working with US customs? Probably not.
sophacles 5y ago
You make a good attempt at joking here, but ultimately fail. Your absurd position: "we live in a post-Crhistian/post-religious society" is just way way too far as an initial gambit. Maybe try toning it down at first? Or alternately going way further at the start. This just hits poe's law too hard.

newaccount2021 5y ago

Sorry Google, you created this farce by coddling these morons and many others like them

DwnVoteHoneyPot 5y ago

I guess other companies now will be wary of adding altruistic goals. No good deeds go unpunished.

another-dave 5y ago
In fairness "Don't be evil" isn't really a meaningful goal, it's so vague as to be meaningless. E.g. I'd be surprised if any decision got reversed because it went against it.

b8 5y ago

Well the definition of evil is being immortal and wicked. https://stallman.org/google.html https://stallman.org/google.html has a list of many wicked things that Google has done and there's many others. So maybe they could use some of those things as proof that Google has betrayed the DBE motto. I doubt that anything will come of of this or that a judge won't dismiss this in a quick matter.

scandox 5y ago

Google can easily prove they were evil even at the time they first deployed that corporate motto. It's interesting to me that we fell for this at the time. I mean if someone says to you at a party "I'm a nice guy" well it's obvious they're a bloody monster...but a corporation doing the same thing and early noughties me is like "well that sounds nice".

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noizejoy 5y ago

It’s actually worth to RTFA, since it gives additional context of employment contracts, activism and firing.

d1a2n 5y ago

[flagged]

jeremyjh 5y ago
Why do you need to separate children from their parents - who are seeking political asylum - to "SeCURe TeH bORdER!"
- LegitShady 5y ago
  because many children are being trafficked by people who aren't their adults.
- Handstand 5y ago
  I want to be clear that im explicitly against the policy of doing that, but it doesnt look like the person you replied to made any mention of that either.
  - jeremyjh 5y ago
    He said that "leftist activists" objected to a country securing its borders, but that is not what they were objecting to.
vineyardmike 5y ago
> just leftist whining just rightist whining. Fixed it for you :) jk but why do people feel the need to make political points out of nothing. You could find tons of examples of things that are evil and not just the few things that fit one persons viewpoints.
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amelius 5y ago

Reminds me of the JSLint case, where the author said "this software can't be used for evil", and then a bunch of lawyers from IBM couldn't figure out what "evil" meant and demanded a change in the license.

slownews45 5y ago

I thought they were fired for somehow getting chrome to pop-up notices when visiting the website of a google contractor that was anti-union. I mean, I like the effort, but... it's unlikely that an employer is going to want to pay employees to do things they don't want to have done? "Her suspension began just three hours after she published a piece of code that created a pop-up notification when Google employees visited the website of IRI Consultants" I'm curious how one even gets chrome to monitor and pop up a notice when google folks visit a website. If it was some kind of ad that seems OK. If she used google's infrastructure to push a popup to all google employees... do other businesses permit this? Can a chase employee push something to all chase.com users alerting them to something they care about?

tdeck 5y ago
IIRC they added it to one of the utility extensions that many Google employees install, although I no longer recall which one.
- slownews45 5y ago
  Fascinating. You'd think you'd have to be in some kind of security type role to be able to do this if they had access / control over an extension on google employee computers. Kind of funny seeing maybe some google naivete and the "do no evil" thing come back to bite google. When I was in high school I had a fair bit of fun going outside the permitted guidelines. By college I'd developed a reasonable sense of boundaries with other folks equipment / jobs with a trust element. If I pushed a pop-up notice out company wide with a message my employer didn't approve of, I'd definitely be expecting to be going out the door rather than doing the litigation process. Having worked a bit in govt interesting to see the NLRB pursue this, in govt my experience was a REDICULOUSLY dim view would be taken of something like this.
  - Eelongate 5y ago
    > If I pushed a pop-up notice out company wide with a message my employer didn't approve of, I'd definitely be expecting to be going out the door rather than doing the litigation process. If it were relating to anything other than labor organization, it would be a no brainer. But there are special legal protections for labor organization, so I not sure it's clear cut in this particular circumstance.

dharmab 5y ago

Relation: The JSLint license has a clause stating that it shall not be used for evil. IBM has obtained a license to be able to use JSLint for evil, presumably to avoid this type of suit: https://youtu.be/-C-JoyNuQJs?t=41m20s https://youtu.be/-C-JoyNuQJs?t=41m20s

Laremere 5y ago

It seems the title is implying that the people suing think Google had an obligation to not be evil because that was its motto. Reading the article, the lawsuit is about something more reasonable: They signed an employee code of conduct which included "Don't Be Evil". They organized a movement within Google in pursuit of contractually obligated motto, and believe they were fired for doing this organizing. Say you were hired as security. You signed a contract stating you wouldn't let anyone enter the building who doesn't have a valid employee id. One day a VP forgets his ID at home, and puts you in a tough spot. Fearing you'd be fired because you violated your contract, you deny the VP access to the building. The VP is mad, and gets revenge on you by getting you fired. In this case, suing the company for following the rules it made you follow seems reasonable. The problem here is "Don't Be Evil" is so vague. I'm unsure it will have enough standing to succeed, but it's not entirely unreasonable.

henryfjordan 5y ago
Vagueness is to be construed against the drafter of the contract, Google in this case.
- nickff 5y ago
  I believe that only applies to contracts of adhesion (in most areas), though this contract may be one of adhesion. The presumption would probably be taken to mean that the employee couldn't be fired 'with cause' for 'being evil', but I don't know how you'd prove Google was 'being evil'. This is tantamount to accusing someone of fraud for saying that they 'were nice', but then not 'being nice'.
  - henryfjordan 5y ago
    I don't think it applies strictly to contracts of adhesion, just contracts where a single party was the drafter of the bad term. This case will not hinge on what the definition of "evil" is, but on whether "don't be evil" was a real term of the contract or some errata in the employee handbook. And even then, the complaint isn't "Google was evil" but rather "Google's handbook said to point out evil when I see it and they fired me for it".

unyttigfjelltol 5y ago

NPR indicates the key substantive issue is whether the workers improperly leaked data. The workers say they didn't, factually, leak data (apparently). The 'Evil' bit would allow the workers to present evidence at trial of the substantive right or wrong of what Google was doing, whereas it's irrelevant to vanilla issues of data security. Attorneys structure complaints like this every day of the week, and it's functioning precisely as intended-- NPR ran an article about 'Evil'.

AlbertCory 5y ago

(Disclaimer: I wasn't there at the very beginning. I joined in Nov. 2005 when the motto was already in place.) The origin of "don't be evil" had nothing to do with politics. It had to do, especially, with selling search placement, which was something that search engines before Google regularly did. Whether you bought ads on Search or not had no bearing on where you came out in the Search results, and you can doubt that all you like but it was true. I'm not AS sure about this one, but another evil practice which inspired the slogan was: giving preference to your own products in search results. Google didn't need to do that back in the day, because it didn't really HAVE any other products. It pretty definitely succumbed to that evil once it had some. If the case is not tossed, the judge will probably construe the term for the jury, similar to how a patent claim is construed. The two sides will fight over the construction, but the judge's ruling will stand. I'm pretty sure he'd construe "don't be evil" by what it meant to Google, and not what the three ex-employees thought. If they were in doubt, they could have asked.

bborud 5y ago
While I was there (about a year later) I can remember it being used generally in meetings to judge if something was ethical. I can remember things being nixed (by engineers) for being too “evil”. Some of those things would probably be okay today - now that Mr Zuckerberg has moved the goalposts for how creepy a company can allow itself to get - and everyone must follow or risk losing out.
titzer 5y ago
> It had to do, especially, with selling search placement, which was something that search engines before Google regularly did. Whether you bought ads on Search or not had no bearing on where you came out in the Search results, and you can doubt that all you like but it was true. Which, with the slow boil of reducing the yellow background of ads down to next to nothing, then moving them ahead of results, and slowly fading the background to nothing, whittling the little "Ad" chip down to nothing [1], is today exactly what Google is doing. [1] https://www.webprofits.com.au/blog/google-search-change https://www.webprofits.com.au/blog/google-search-change > another evil practice which inspired the slogan was: giving preference to your own products in search results. Which it absolutely does, and did worse (sued in EU over Google shopping results). I joined in 2010. At no point did I ever drink the koolaid that Google would ever really live up to this vague ideal, but I was, at the time, impressed by how ethical and careful the company seemed to be. That completely changed, little by little, and I lost that trust, or rather, that trust was broken and slowly evaporated. Today, Google is a behemoth that will seemingly stop at nothing to keep that 20% YoY gravy train going. It's getting ridiculous. They're paving over cyberspace with ads and gobbling every profitable thing and potential competitor. They won't be stopping the growth mindset. The self deception at the top is staggering. Google is becoming everything the internet never should have been.

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thisisauserid 5y ago

Cute!

mrkramer 5y ago

And what is the definition of evil according to them? Showing ads to users. Then let's sue the whole freaking internet.

Thorentis 5y ago

In the Code of Conduct they signed, was "evil" actually defined? Usually contracts go to great lengths to define every single term that is used, even obvious ones. If "evil" was not defined, then who gets to decide its definition for the purposes of enforcing the contract, the writer, or the signer?

TheCoelacanth 5y ago
Ambiguous contract terms are taken to mean whatever is most detrimental to the writer.

mountainb 5y ago

The people who will win this are the lawyers. The plaintiffs will not win.

metta2uall 5y ago

Oh, I thought this was about Google encouraging the rampant consumerism that is causing so much environmental degradation...

bagels 5y ago

The premise of the lawsuit seems flawed. The code of conduct or a motto is not a contract. The code of conduct generally limits the conduct of the employee, and does not create obligations for the company. When "Don't be Evil" is in the code of conduct, it only suggest that the employee should not engage in evil behavior, but doesn't preclude the company from doing so, and doesn't implicitly allow all non-evil behavior by the employee.

marcinzm 5y ago
It seems the code of conduct in this case said employees should raise issues to Google. The claim is that google then fired employees for raising issues around google being evil. It has absolutely zero to do with Google actually doing evil or not doing evil.
- bagels 5y ago
  I don't see in the article that the code of conduct asked employees to call out the company. Maybe you have some other source or have read the complaint? The facts in the article make the suit seem meritless.

karmasimida 5y ago

Is there a valid legal standing to this? I doubt it.

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Manuel_D 5y ago

> The trio say they thought they were behaving in accordance with that principle when they organized Google employees against controversial projects, such as work for U.S. Customs and Border Protection during the Trump administration. The workers circulated a petition calling on Google to publicly commit to not working with CBP. Plenty of people don't subscribe to the belief that it's evil to detain people illegally entering a country. Try overstaying your tourist visa in another country: you'll be arrested, then deported. Same deal with doing Pentagon contracts, as mentioned later in the article. Not everyone subscribes to the belief that any defense-related work is evil. I seriously doubt that this will even be allowed to get to court. This lawsuit seems more like activism than a credible legal challenge.

spaceflunky 5y ago

You'd be surprised how many Google employees have a warped view of the company or even that of what a business is suppose to do. There are some people with the org that would genuinely debate you as to whether making a profit (any kind of profit) is a good or bad thing.

rmah 5y ago

Haha, this is funny. On one hand, I can't help feel a bit of schadenfreude for Google being harassed with this frivolous lawsuit because of their obviously self-indulgent motto. On the other hand, it is a bit sad that the county even accepted such a frivolous lawsuit. On the gripping hand, I don't like the sort of people who pretend to be shocked SHOCKED! that the motto was nothing but a fig leaf. So it's weirdly uncomfortable feelings for me all around.

thisiswater 5y ago
While I can't speak to the case, I have anecdotally known PhD-level researchers who have cited "don't be evil" as part of their decisions to trust Google with potentially sensitive data. The phrase has clout. This has been official policy. It seems like more than a motto at that point.
- rmah 5y ago
  I don't understand how anyone can reach early adulthood and actually take such drivel from a corporation at face value. As you say, clearly such people exist. It just mystifies me.
  - Eelongate 5y ago
    Google was pretty good at making people think Google was different.

tonetheman 5y ago

This appears to morons trying to get money for being morons.

RickJWagner 5y ago

I do think Google does evil things. But not the same things the ex-employees are protesting. I guess it's subjective.

authed 5y ago

Of course this post is getting down-ranked to hell ;)