Google: ‘Don’t be evil’
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
I don’t know how many of you know this, but Google has always had an unofficial corporate motto: Don’t be evil. It was pronounced in 2001 by Paul Buchheit, creator of Google’s Gmail (but who has now left to found his own Internet venture). At that time, Google was still this idealistic group of young engineers and entrepreneurs who dreamed of changing the world. In other words, they were not such a major player yet.
Today, the world’s #1 search engine (among other things) is a multibillion-dollar company with well over 16,000 employees. It has become the single biggest item on everyone’s mind when using the Internet. In other words, Google is now constantly under close scrutiny by critics and regular users alike.
Google has been branded as “evil” by many industry watchers, due to some decisions it has made that have impacted a few holy-grail-level beliefs held by Internet users. Privacy: the Google Maps service is seen by some as an intrusion to privacy. In the U.S. and soon in Australia, you can see photographed views of streets from the ground; and there have been complaints of actual faces and plate numbers being visible.
Censorship: When Google entered China in 2006, it complied with censorship restrictions imposed by the Chinese government. The censorship effectively blocks search results that displayed — in the Chinese government’s perception — politically sensitive information. Google CEO Eric Schmidt came under fire for acceding to this blatant disregard for free access to public information. Schmidt was quoted as saying, “We actually did an evil scale, and decided not to serve at all was worse evil.”
If you think about it, “Don’t be evil” is a rather impossible dictum to follow. As with any publicly listed company, the priority of a business is to provide ever-increasing returns in favor of its shareholders. This could — and often does — conflict with any company’s perceived core values.
Apparently, Google is using its shareholders as an excuse for dealing with totalitarian regimes. But more and more lately, people are holding Google to its self-imposed maxim. The corporate motto has encouraged the public to hold Google to a higher standard.
Why? Because people have not forgotten why Google became so widely accepted in such a short time: that it wanted to change the world. And it has. For example, its email product, Gmail, was the reason for Yahoo’s and Hotmail’s scampering to increase their inbox space allotment. Do you remember that Yahoo! Mail only let you have 4 megabytes to store all your emails and attachments? That’s just 2 high-quality photos and your inbox is done for.
Its flagship search product, of course, revolutionized the way people found information on the Web. In no time at all, the expression “Google it!” became a household word all over the world.
People won’t let Google forget its roots. Internet users are increasingly disappointed about the direction the search giant is taking. In fact, in many instances, it has been labeled as ‘the next Microsoft’. And this is uttered unflatteringly, mind you.
Being the new big kid on the block — nay, the whole neighborhood! — is certainly tough. It can only go either of two ways in the eyes of the public: Google becomes the hero of the Internet, or it becomes the bully.
Probably the hottest news abuzz this year is the looming merger — some say hostile takeover — between Microsoft and Yahoo. Earlier, it was about the resistance on the part of Yahoo to capitulate to the software giant. Lately, the focus has shifted to Redmond and the perceived motive behind their bid to acquire the second largest search engine.
