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Patents are just one way to be evil. Another way to be evil might be to let Canadian companies advertise illegally to sell prescription drugs in the US. From

Patents are just one way to be evil. Another way to be evil might be to let Canadian companies advertise illegally to sell prescription drugs in the US. From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/24/google-settles-pharmacy-ad-probe_n_935183.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/24/google-settles-phar... "Investigators snared Google's ad system by creating seven undercover websites offering prescription drugs to be sold without a prescription or the completion of an online medical questionnaire, Martin-Weis said. An undercover investigator informed Google employees creating the advertising for the products that they were manufactured overseas and did not require customers to have a valid prescription, she said. "In each instance, despite this knowledge, Google employees created a full advertising campaign for each of the undercover websites," Martin-Weis said."

sharmajai 15y ago
Google is not law enforcement and thank god for that. Unlike apple which strives to be the moral leader of the world that nobody needs. What google did here was illegal and it paid the price for it, but I don't see anybody getting directly harmed by google's decision, it was not google selling the drugs themselves or that the drugs were not upto the standards. Besides by the same reasoning google should block all the illegal torrent sites, or wikileaks for that matter. Always remember your truth is not everybody else's truth, and it is better that the world's leading search engine does not take sides for you.
- crenshaw 15y ago
  So let me get this straight. Protecting your IP with legal patents is evil. Willfully and knowingly getting paid to advertise illegally distributed prescription drugs is fine and dandy. Clearly Google can do no evil, because everything they do is good in your eyes. Next thing you'll tell me that collecting advertising for child porn, hitmen, or crack is fine too. They don't make moral judgments. Except in China when they're having problems -- then they're suddenly all about morality. I love all the jerk-wad Google apologists downvoting this. Few companies I can stand less than this self-righteous company and its blind followers.
  - richardw 15y ago
    What you might be seeing is the response of intelligent people who make up their own minds, and who consider Google overall to be much less evil than, oh, I dunno, MicrosoftOracleAppleFacebooketc? At least they have a bold statement that people like us, the media and their own employees will measure them up against, every hour of every day. Whether they always unfailingly measure up to it isn't as important as having it there. Especially for a profit-driven company that has unending opportunities to get just a bit more evil.
  - danssig 15y ago
    Even worse is the Orwellian Google love that's shitting all over this thread. Bill Gates started a charity because charities suck so bad and he wanted his billions to accomplish something. Steve Jobs doesn't even take money for his work (he gets stock options that he often doesn't even bother to extercise), hell, even Larry Ellison signed a thing to donate most of his fortune to charity when he dies. But, no, it's Google who are the benevolent ones! Why? Well because their motto says so, duh?
    - sharmajai 15y ago
      Then maybe Steve Jobs should use his salary to make his products affordable to third world countries to do some real good than serving the riches of the world, and maybe Larry Ellison should have honored Sun Microsystem's policies of not suing anybody who uses Java APIs.
      - danssig 15y ago
        The point wasn't that Jobs/Ellison/Gates are great role models. I was showing that everyone that many would consider evil has also shown benevolence. There is nothing that makes the google founders stand out. In fact, I can't really think of anything they've done to make the world a better place besides say they want to. At least these other guys have done something.
  - sharmajai 15y ago
    Laws, being constructed by humans are not infalliable, or otherwise new laws won't replace existing ones. I don't know how willing the google's decision to permit advertising of prescription drugs was, but I am assuming they went with it because there was no precedent for such a thing in the past (the article mentions this as this is the first time a search engine being held responsible). But I hope and am almost certain that google won't do such a thing again. We will see. Your example of child porn and crack is taking it too far and I am sure no such thing will happen. But if you want google to be enforcing all the laws for you, then maybe it should also detect your location and disallow all merchants catering to gay marriages in the search results, in states where it is prohibited. Also I don't agree with your generalist approach to corporations that they are all equally evil. I for one would prefer a corporation which makes a bold statement about its policies being non evil and one which is ready to be called upon when it goes astray its path, than one which makes no such claims. To me this is not self righteousness but self discipline.

sharmajai 15y ago

Google is not law enforcement and thank god for that. Unlike apple which strives to be the moral leader of the world that nobody needs. What google did here was illegal and it paid the price for it, but I don't see anybody getting directly harmed by google's decision, it was not google selling the drugs themselves or that the drugs were not upto the standards. Besides by the same reasoning google should block all the illegal torrent sites, or wikileaks for that matter. Always remember your truth is not everybody else's truth, and it is better that the world's leading search engine does not take sides for you.

crenshaw 15y ago
So let me get this straight. Protecting your IP with legal patents is evil. Willfully and knowingly getting paid to advertise illegally distributed prescription drugs is fine and dandy. Clearly Google can do no evil, because everything they do is good in your eyes. Next thing you'll tell me that collecting advertising for child porn, hitmen, or crack is fine too. They don't make moral judgments. Except in China when they're having problems -- then they're suddenly all about morality. I love all the jerk-wad Google apologists downvoting this. Few companies I can stand less than this self-righteous company and its blind followers.
- richardw 15y ago
  What you might be seeing is the response of intelligent people who make up their own minds, and who consider Google overall to be much less evil than, oh, I dunno, MicrosoftOracleAppleFacebooketc? At least they have a bold statement that people like us, the media and their own employees will measure them up against, every hour of every day. Whether they always unfailingly measure up to it isn't as important as having it there. Especially for a profit-driven company that has unending opportunities to get just a bit more evil.
- danssig 15y ago
  Even worse is the Orwellian Google love that's shitting all over this thread. Bill Gates started a charity because charities suck so bad and he wanted his billions to accomplish something. Steve Jobs doesn't even take money for his work (he gets stock options that he often doesn't even bother to extercise), hell, even Larry Ellison signed a thing to donate most of his fortune to charity when he dies. But, no, it's Google who are the benevolent ones! Why? Well because their motto says so, duh?
  - sharmajai 15y ago
    Then maybe Steve Jobs should use his salary to make his products affordable to third world countries to do some real good than serving the riches of the world, and maybe Larry Ellison should have honored Sun Microsystem's policies of not suing anybody who uses Java APIs.
    - danssig 15y ago
      The point wasn't that Jobs/Ellison/Gates are great role models. I was showing that everyone that many would consider evil has also shown benevolence. There is nothing that makes the google founders stand out. In fact, I can't really think of anything they've done to make the world a better place besides say they want to. At least these other guys have done something.
- sharmajai 15y ago
  Laws, being constructed by humans are not infalliable, or otherwise new laws won't replace existing ones. I don't know how willing the google's decision to permit advertising of prescription drugs was, but I am assuming they went with it because there was no precedent for such a thing in the past (the article mentions this as this is the first time a search engine being held responsible). But I hope and am almost certain that google won't do such a thing again. We will see. Your example of child porn and crack is taking it too far and I am sure no such thing will happen. But if you want google to be enforcing all the laws for you, then maybe it should also detect your location and disallow all merchants catering to gay marriages in the search results, in states where it is prohibited. Also I don't agree with your generalist approach to corporations that they are all equally evil. I for one would prefer a corporation which makes a bold statement about its policies being non evil and one which is ready to be called upon when it goes astray its path, than one which makes no such claims. To me this is not self righteousness but self discipline.