5 ms·

I'm right with you on this one. I personally think the old 'don't be evil' motto is looking very tatty these days. That was always going to happen, I guess, bu

by brc 15y ago

I'm right with you on this one. I personally think the old 'don't be evil' motto is looking very tatty these days. That was always going to happen, I guess, but sometimes I find it very hard to find a difference between activities of companies Google used to speak out against, and modern Google. Google used to be the thing when it was a bare bones, super fast and accurate search engine. Nowadays trying to find an organic search result is getting very early-yahoo like. Just take an objective look at the search results for an even mildly-popular term and you'll find it buried under layers of ads and Google verticals like YouTube and others. I'm envious of some of my friends who just skipped the entire social networking thing. They are gloriously offline if you try and find them. I got into social networking while working at a social networking startup, and now I don't really get much value from it anymore. But all my 'stuff' is out there, so closing the accounts now is somewhat superfluous and pointless. I think Twitter is about the only thing to use - you get to communicate but you really do get to control how much people get to know about you. As for the comments about needing to be 'out there' as an entrepreneur - I've spent a token amount of SEO effort to get myself on front page search engine results - if people want to find me, they will. But the endless linked-in requests from people you've spoken too once via email - it's all getting very tedious.

chugger 15y ago
Google is a false prophet hiding behind the veil of their "don't be evil" mantra. Google is the real evil corporation but these geeks are too blind to see it. Now they know what these guys at Google are up to.
- mladenkovacevic 15y ago
  That describes pretty much every other for-profit corporation that we all do business with on a daily basis as consumers. I don't think they're any more or any less evil than other large company. But this is just about keeping them honest on an issue that is a very big deal with most of their customers. Also I think most of these geeks are pretty smart and aware of what's going on around them.
  - rednaught 15y ago
    Maybe not everything has to be a purely "for-profit" endeavor. There are alternatives and there are plenty of people willing to support change. http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/10/to_reform_capitalism_ceos_shou.html http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/10/to_reform_capitalism_ceos_sh...
- davidhollander 15y ago
  > Google is the real evil corporation but these geeks are too blind to see it. Okay, since there is a singular, "real" evil corporation, are the other non-real evil corporations in the imaginary-evil or fake-evil domain? edit: A bit cryptic, my point is that "evil" has been overloaded to meaninglessness. It decreases one's intelligence to use it in an assertion. In war and throughout history, party A asserts party B is evil, and party B asserts party A is evil. If party A is truly evil, then they would have no scruples over claiming party B is truly evil, and vice versa, analagous to the Liar's Paradox. Entering this frame, and debating who is "truly" the evil one, is a lens more likely to obscure than clarify. An alternative heuristic for assessing the merits of actions: Coercion is considered polar to freedom by many social philosophers. Does party A use coercion to force party B into making a decision that leaves party B worse off? Does google use coercion to drive user registration? Does google use coercion to prevent deregistration? Does google use coercion to damage competitors? Does google use coercion to forcefully identify the anonymous? No. No they don't.
  - chugger 15y ago
    whatever you think will make you happy.
  - chugger 15y ago
    You're trying too hard. People usually do that when they're defending someone they know is guilty. People usually just let the facts speak for themselves.
    - rhu86 15y ago
      This is a really poor argument IMHO. You haven't addressed any of his points.
  - eliasmacpherson 15y ago
    I disagree, google automatically created and logged me into a youtube account just because I was logged into gmail. It cannot be deleted, and it told me: "While you're logged in, YouTube will keep track of your viewing history, and use videos you’ve watched, videos you’ve liked, and your subscriptions to recommend other videos for you to enjoy. With 48 hours of video uploaded every minute, we’re sure to find you at least a couple more videos worth watching!" Coercion isn't limited to the targets decisions, it can also be applied to their acts. Coercion isn't limited to physical coercion. I consider the persistent pestering for a phone number in gmail to be coercive. I consider repeatedly asking G+ users for government ID to be coercive.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
You may (or may not) be surprised but when I was there a lot of energy was spent by the rank and file on not being evil. The challenge is of course in 'winning' and decades of research on this shows that people who really want to win will be a bit evil if they can get away with it and win at the same time. So what Google has is a competitive culture (for a long time you couldn't get a raise without getting a promotion) which is peer balanced. They have a huge toolbox of technologies that can generate cash when tweaked. And they have certain groups who's success criteria is 'can you make more cash this quarter than last quarter.' Unless actively worked against, like mold in a bathroom, evil sort of emerges out of that environment. Kind of scary to watch actually.
- jdp23 15y ago
  I'm not surprised at all. Back in 2006 when I was doing competitive strategy at MS and studying Google's culture, I came away very impressed with how much people throughout the organization cared about not being evil. But the dynamics you describe were already in play. Also Google+ is being led by Vic Gundotra, who spent most of his career at Microsoft. Do relative newcomers to Google have the same passion about not being evil, and the same norms about what is/isn't evil?
- billswift 15y ago
  And people who really want to "win" will be as evil as they need to be in order to "win" (however they define winning, hence the quotes).
- brc 15y ago
  You describe what I was trying to say. It's easy to be non-evil in a startup environment for a variety of reasons. However, once sold and listed, quarterly performance numbers start to permeate the entire organisation. As you say, the needs of making these numbers start to outweigh the don't be evil mantra. And, because the original services were set up with a 'trust us, we're not evil', the gains to be made from tweaking the 'evil' dial up, even just a tiny bit, are quite large. I'm not surprised the rank and file are committed to the lofty ideals and goals, and they probably will continue to attract new recruits for the foreseeable future. But in order to keep committed to those types of goals, necessarily some profit is going to have to be foregone. That's mighty hard to do. My guess is that the big event that makes people trust Google less is close, or maybe has even already been but hasn't been disclosed yet. To me, they're in the same kind of space that Microsoft was post-Windows 95 and pre-Windows 98. Everyone still likes them but questions are being asked. Legal intervention is around the corner. I see privacy kind of like any economic externality. There's no (immediate) price on loss of privacy, so people are happy to trade it away for benefits like free email and social networking. Can you price privacy? Well, objectively we already are when we forgo private services for free ones. You could say we price our privacy at the cost difference between a free service and a paid one.

by brc 15y ago

chugger 15y ago

Google is a false prophet hiding behind the veil of their "don't be evil" mantra. Google is the real evil corporation but these geeks are too blind to see it. Now they know what these guys at Google are up to.

mladenkovacevic 15y ago
That describes pretty much every other for-profit corporation that we all do business with on a daily basis as consumers. I don't think they're any more or any less evil than other large company. But this is just about keeping them honest on an issue that is a very big deal with most of their customers. Also I think most of these geeks are pretty smart and aware of what's going on around them.
- rednaught 15y ago
  Maybe not everything has to be a purely "for-profit" endeavor. There are alternatives and there are plenty of people willing to support change. http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/10/to_reform_capitalism_ceos_shou.html http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/10/to_reform_capitalism_ceos_sh...
davidhollander 15y ago
> Google is the real evil corporation but these geeks are too blind to see it. Okay, since there is a singular, "real" evil corporation, are the other non-real evil corporations in the imaginary-evil or fake-evil domain? edit: A bit cryptic, my point is that "evil" has been overloaded to meaninglessness. It decreases one's intelligence to use it in an assertion. In war and throughout history, party A asserts party B is evil, and party B asserts party A is evil. If party A is truly evil, then they would have no scruples over claiming party B is truly evil, and vice versa, analagous to the Liar's Paradox. Entering this frame, and debating who is "truly" the evil one, is a lens more likely to obscure than clarify. An alternative heuristic for assessing the merits of actions: Coercion is considered polar to freedom by many social philosophers. Does party A use coercion to force party B into making a decision that leaves party B worse off? Does google use coercion to drive user registration? Does google use coercion to prevent deregistration? Does google use coercion to damage competitors? Does google use coercion to forcefully identify the anonymous? No. No they don't.
- chugger 15y ago
  whatever you think will make you happy.
- chugger 15y ago
  You're trying too hard. People usually do that when they're defending someone they know is guilty. People usually just let the facts speak for themselves.
  - rhu86 15y ago
    This is a really poor argument IMHO. You haven't addressed any of his points.
- eliasmacpherson 15y ago
  I disagree, google automatically created and logged me into a youtube account just because I was logged into gmail. It cannot be deleted, and it told me: "While you're logged in, YouTube will keep track of your viewing history, and use videos you’ve watched, videos you’ve liked, and your subscriptions to recommend other videos for you to enjoy. With 48 hours of video uploaded every minute, we’re sure to find you at least a couple more videos worth watching!" Coercion isn't limited to the targets decisions, it can also be applied to their acts. Coercion isn't limited to physical coercion. I consider the persistent pestering for a phone number in gmail to be coercive. I consider repeatedly asking G+ users for government ID to be coercive.

ChuckMcM 15y ago

You may (or may not) be surprised but when I was there a lot of energy was spent by the rank and file on not being evil. The challenge is of course in 'winning' and decades of research on this shows that people who really want to win will be a bit evil if they can get away with it and win at the same time. So what Google has is a competitive culture (for a long time you couldn't get a raise without getting a promotion) which is peer balanced. They have a huge toolbox of technologies that can generate cash when tweaked. And they have certain groups who's success criteria is 'can you make more cash this quarter than last quarter.' Unless actively worked against, like mold in a bathroom, evil sort of emerges out of that environment. Kind of scary to watch actually.

jdp23 15y ago
I'm not surprised at all. Back in 2006 when I was doing competitive strategy at MS and studying Google's culture, I came away very impressed with how much people throughout the organization cared about not being evil. But the dynamics you describe were already in play. Also Google+ is being led by Vic Gundotra, who spent most of his career at Microsoft. Do relative newcomers to Google have the same passion about not being evil, and the same norms about what is/isn't evil?
billswift 15y ago
And people who really want to "win" will be as evil as they need to be in order to "win" (however they define winning, hence the quotes).
brc 15y ago
You describe what I was trying to say. It's easy to be non-evil in a startup environment for a variety of reasons. However, once sold and listed, quarterly performance numbers start to permeate the entire organisation. As you say, the needs of making these numbers start to outweigh the don't be evil mantra. And, because the original services were set up with a 'trust us, we're not evil', the gains to be made from tweaking the 'evil' dial up, even just a tiny bit, are quite large. I'm not surprised the rank and file are committed to the lofty ideals and goals, and they probably will continue to attract new recruits for the foreseeable future. But in order to keep committed to those types of goals, necessarily some profit is going to have to be foregone. That's mighty hard to do. My guess is that the big event that makes people trust Google less is close, or maybe has even already been but hasn't been disclosed yet. To me, they're in the same kind of space that Microsoft was post-Windows 95 and pre-Windows 98. Everyone still likes them but questions are being asked. Legal intervention is around the corner. I see privacy kind of like any economic externality. There's no (immediate) price on loss of privacy, so people are happy to trade it away for benefits like free email and social networking. Can you price privacy? Well, objectively we already are when we forgo private services for free ones. You could say we price our privacy at the cost difference between a free service and a paid one.