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> Google was a different company 9 years ago. No it wasn’t.
by bix6 4mo ago
> Google was a different company 9 years ago.
No it wasn’t.
- szundi 4mo ago16 years ago it was
- p-as-software 3mo agoJup! From day 2, the moment when they discover that customer data (yours, mine, everyone's) is more valuable than gold. Also the interaction with government and defense and intelligence is well documented: from google docs to maps and clouds. I wish people will read "Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet" by Yasha Levine and stop feigning ignorance. I even expect that minimal level of awareness about the real business culture and inherent nature of these internet mega-corps for people in top positions. "Don't Be Evil" is a psychological machination for people working at google to ease their life in work related cognitive dissonance and marketing speak to the rest of us. If I were an angel (actual, not fallen yet) I will not tell my self: "Don’t Be Evil". My motto will be "keep being holy" or "be holier" or something that keep me in my angelic state or better. So even the “Don’t Be Evil” motto by itself already spill the beans!
- ThrowawayR2 3mo agoGoogle's purchase and subsequent integration of Doubleclick, reviled industry-wide for their invasive, sleazy adtech, was 18 years ago.
- shantnutiwari 4mo agoyeah, looks like some history rewriting. 9 years ago was 2017-- and by that time Google was already doing sleazy SEO shit, scanning peoples emails to who them ads, trying to make ads seem like general search results etc etc Google was *exactly* this company it is today
- w4der 4mo agoThe "Don't be evil" motto was diluted in 2015 when alphabet was formed, and taken down in 2018, so yeah, things were brewing from before.
- ethbr1 4mo agoMorals only matter when they restrain someone from doing something beneficial to themselves. Absent a stake in the outcome, it's just virtue signaling. And when Google was forced to choose between juicing ad revenue and its morals, it chose the former.
- Rebuff5007 4mo agoThe author of this article disagrees: > “Don’t Be Evil” wasn’t just a slogan of often-referenced Googliness—it was a north star for teams making hard calls. It definitely counts for something that at least one senior leader felt the slogan was relevant for decision making.
- 2muchcoffeeman 3mo agoThe author is not cynical enough. Do you going around telling people how virtuous you are? No, good people just try and be good. The slogan was a red flag right from the start.
- Cpoll 3mo agoThat sounds pithy, but a person doesn't need to remind themselves of their own values; a company of 200,000 people does. Which isn't to say cynicism for these sorts of company charters isn't warranted, just not for that reason.
- 2muchcoffeeman 3mo agoI agree. But the moto has always lacked any aspiration about how they should do good or make the world better. “Don’t be evil”. Who thinks they are being evil? No one.
- 3mo ago
- kelipso 3mo agoThat’s quite a bit different from helping to kill people. Let’s not lump every ethical issue into one. And not conflate SEO sleaze with aiding murder.
- bix6 3mo agoExcept Google works with the Pentagon and the Israeli government so yes they are helping kill people.
- sillyfluke 3mo agoYeah, I think since it's getting provably worse no matter where you start the clock everyone can claim this whenever they actually do leave. Just to give one example, you have the Google founders bending the knee to Trump these days whereas when Trump started his first term you had articles like this: "Google co-founder Sergey Brin joins protest against immigration order at San Francisco airport" (2017) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13512063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13512063
- skeeter2020 4mo ago"Google was a different company n years ago" where n is how long they've been there + ~6 to 12 months
- bsimpson 3mo agoThe employee experience was very different 9y ago.
- greenleafone7 3mo agoTruer words have never be told. It truly wasn't. Google had been rotten for a very long time.
- zobzu 3mo agoactually it was. they were no angels. but a majority of devs wanted to do good. now everyone wanta to make a quick buck no matter what. im surprised dave is still there too. probably can't let it go...
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- thayne 3mo agoI think a big difference is the majority of developers knew they could find employment relatively easily elsewhere, so they felt comfortable protesting things they didn't feel comfortable with, and google leadership had some level of accountability to employees. Now though, if you speak up you might get targeted for the next round of layoffs, and the current job market is a lot tougher, so you could end up unemployed for quite a while.
- tzs 3mo agoThe article clearly lists at least two ways they are significantly different now.
- bix6 3mo agoGreat, two whole ways!! Totally a different company.
- fugalfervor 3mo agoWhen one of those ways is supporting mass killing, I'd say even one way would be enough to make it a completely different company. Your post is asinine.
- bix6 3mo agoIt’s just a continuation of the very obvious trend. Google worked with NSA on PRISM, CIA on Iraq war, jigsaw was 2010, etc. You’re not supposed to call people asinine just because you disagree with them.
- dpark 3mo ago> Google worked with NSA on PRISM Complied with legal orders. Do you have evidence that they did anything more? > CIA on Iraq war Are you talking about the Google earth data or something else? > jigsaw was 2010 What does this mean? What did their jigsaw project do that I missed?
- thayne 3mo agoIt is worse now than it was 9 years ago, but it even then it was clearly moving in the wrong direction. And the current google is the result of trends that started long before 2017.
- cynicalkane 3mo agoI worked at Google for a similar span. It was different 9 years ago, in ways that are specifically described in the blog post you're ignoring, which I and many other Googlers would confirm are true.
- Teever 3mo agoWas it different or are the people who voluntarily started working for Google around that period unable to admit to themselves and others that it was always questionable to work for a entity like Google? To certain observers this was obviously the direction tech monopolies were going to go. What have those people always seen that you're only now beginning to admit is an inherently defective aspect of these organizations?
- cynicalkane 3mo agoHoly cow dude, I am not personally answerable for all the faults of a megacorp, nor am I "only now beginning to admit" anything in your imaginary personal history about me that you made up now. This entire thread makes me sad. A handful of people, the original writer and some other commenters, are saying "this corporation has changed for the worse in some ways" and the overwhelming majority of posts are these weirdos attacking them for why didn't you specifically say the opinion that I want, and why didn't you say it sooner than this post I just became aware of?
- buran77 3mo ago> I am not personally answerable for all the faults of a megacorp It's not very fair for you to answer for the faults of the megacorp but to be honest you kind of put yourself in that position when you defended the indefensible. For all intents and purposes, looking from a user/customer perspective, Google is just as morally bankrupt today as it was 9 years ago. And that's what really matters. You can rationalize it, you can pretend that you couldn't see the trend, that it didn't smell as bad back then, but at the end of the day what Google is doing today is just as morally acceptable as the things they were doing in 2017 were at the time. We just pushed the baseline down and normalized the ever worsening behaviors. So let's not judge 2017 with the eyes from 2026 when the things done back then look more palatable. If you were to ask 2017 me about Google you'd get the same answer as today. Then again I wasn't paid by Google so I could afford to give that answer.
- throwawaypath 3mo agoIt's different now because his stocks have vested.
- _3u10 3mo agoYes but now they have a moral imperative to collect their ad money and aren’t a vested interest. “I’m shocked shocked to find out my pay cheque and stock money came from selling ads.” “here are your winnings sir”
- shuwix 3mo agoExactly. Google's "don't be evil policy" was never applied on Google itself. It was enforced on users, advertisers and publishers. Roughly 15 years ago, it no longer applied to advertisers. 50% of ads (if not more) are utter scams. Noone cares, money talks.
- topgrain2 3mo agoGood Google was functionally gone when Doubleclick took them over. That was a loooong time ago. They gave up trying to fight search spam and just permanently broke their search in like 2008. Not long after that (IIRC) they started serving the same obnoxious ads as everyone else instead of their “nice” text-only ads, and stopped clearly marking inline ads in search results, so they could trick users and better-run their extortion racket (“pay us to advertise for your own company name or who knows where the people who are definitely trying to find your website might end up?”). The notion that they were notably better in 2017 than today reads like some kind of joke.