Google: “Don’t be evil”
Google started out with the mantra “Don’t be evil”:
When Google went public in 2004, it epitomised technological and entrepreneurial genius. Two engineers had developed a remarkably powerful, easy-to-use search engine, opening the doors to vast amounts of knowledge.
The founders proclaimed their motto as ‘Don’t be evil’, which was typical of Silicon Valley’s decades-old techno-optimism. Stewart Brand, writing in Rolling Stone in 1972, claimed that once access to information became universal, it would turn us all into ‘computer bums, all more empowered as individuals and as cooperators’. It would be a new era, Brand continued, of enhanced ‘spontaneous creation and of human interaction’. The ‘early digital idealists’, noted computer scientist and writer Jaron Lanier in 2014, envisioned a ‘sharing’ web that functioned ‘free from the constraints of the commercial order’.
That’s a rather high and extremely unrealistic level of idealism.
We all know what Google has become by now. Interestingly, the “don’t be evil” admonition was removed in 2018:
“Don’t be evil” has been part of the company’s corporate code of conduct since 2000. When Google was reorganized under a new parent company, Alphabet, in 2015, Alphabet assumed a slightly adjusted version of the motto, “do the right thing.” However, Google retained its original “don’t be evil” language until the past several weeks. The phrase has been deeply incorporated into Google’s company culture—so much so that a version of the phrase has served as the wifi password on the shuttles that Google uses to ferry its employees to its Mountain View headquarters, sources told Gizmodo.
My personal opinion is that the founders, despite what I believe actually was a certain amount of idealism, adopted the motto in the first place because they were well aware that, as the company grew, becoming “evil” would be a greater and greater temptation and possibility, perhaps even a probability. And so it came to pass, and at a certain point Google yielded. All in the name of righteousness – of course.
Be evil.
Put the cash in the pocket.
Say “Don’t be evil.”
Put the cash in the pocket.
Evil as you like.
Put the cash in the pocket.
There exist many reasons indeed for the mocking description, by many, of Google as Goolag; amongst them are Alphabet’s relations with the CCP, its treatment of such employees as James Damore, its blatant manipulation (albeit officially denied) of its algorithms in order to advance “progressive” propaganda, its interference in 2020’s election (see the work of Robert Epstein), the censorship rampant not only in its search engine but also on YouTube, and its often ridiculous “autocomplete” suggestions. Unfortunately, in some ways it still works better than the alternatives, and GoogleBooks is a very valuable tool, but one should always approach its results with caution.
I use DuckDuckGo and only rarely go to Google in search of better results. And when I do results are usually no better.
I’ll look at Google Maps, because MapQuest has gotten so buggy. Otherwise, I stick to DuckDuckGo.
Whatever happened to AltaVista?
Actually, I used google when it was in beta. At the time search engine results were largely useless because most search engines used key works in the header which were easily manipulated to draw traffic to the site. You would rarely get what you were looking for through a search as a result.
Google was innovative in its early stages because it emphasized URLs, page titles and most importantly external links to a site to generate the best search results. It was way better than any other search engine in returning relevant results.
I think ‘Don’t Be Evil’ started out as a genuine, if somewhat lame motto, but the company started going off the rails with ad works and other forms of money grubbing. Now they’re just the usual dirtball Woke corporation.
“Don’t be Evil” is tough to maintain when so much money is coming in by looking the other way when evil manifests.
Neo’s post is inspired by a recent article in “Spiked.” The article quotes Jaron Lanier as saying that he “envisioned a ‘sharing’ web that functioned ‘free from the constraints of the commercial order’. This makes him sound idealistic about the internet, even foolish, but I think that’s misleading, and unfair to Lanier. Unfortunately, the article provides no citation, so I haven’t tracked down the source of the quote, and I don’t know its context.
By 2011, Lanier had published “You are not a Gadget: a Manifesto.” I haven’t read the book in a long time, but it was a somewhat famous expression of skepticism about the internet and digital media, by someone who was a pioneer in both. If you’re looking for a more recent version of Lanier’s internet skepticism, you could try “Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.” That was published in 2018.
Joel Kotkin wrote the article in “Spiked,” and I don’t find much wrong with it. I just wish he’d been fair to Jaron Lanier, who knows more about the internet’s dark side than Kotkin ever will.
@Mac: Actually DuckDuckGo started out as a principled search engine that was structured to protect one’s anonymity and provide unfiltered results, but alas, they too have inevitably corrupted their mission – although they still advertise a good game.
I’ve read that DDG’s search engine actually harnesses Microsoft Bing / Yahoo for its results, and yes, by this methodology it’s actively filtered – oh, and it’s not so private, either.
And of course, they’ve hopped aboard the Progressive TruthSayer’s bus as well:
https://winepressnews.com/2022/06/02/duck-duck-go-found-to-be-secretly-allowing-microsoft-to-track-users-brave-steps-up-to-fill-the-void/
https://www.reviewgeek.com/118915/duckduckgo-isnt-as-private-as-you-thought/
From the first moment I read the “Don’t be evil” slogan I assumed it was camouflage for all the evil shite they immediately planned to insert into the non-transparent aspects of their operation. Algorithms, advertising tracking etc.
Umbrella Corporation
I always assumed, as I think most people in hi-tech did, “Don’t Be Evil” meant “Don’t be like IBM or Microsoft” — corporations which played cold-blooded, nasty hardball to cut corners, screw competitors and customers, whatever maximized power and profits was the way to go.
It was a refreshing attitude. For a large, very powerful company, Google was IMO reasonably non-evil until sometime in the 2010s.
Yeah and there is a lot of bad shit before you get to evil ?. They could have used “ be good” instead. Too high a bar I guess.
— corporations which played cold-blooded, nasty hardball to cut corners, screw competitors and customers, whatever maximized power and profits was the way to go. — huxley
The silicon valley venture capital business has taken those ambitions to whole new levels which was always their intent. The last guy involved with them who may have opposed some of that was Bob Noyce (Grinnell grad). Unfortunately, he was also the very first guy involved with silicon valley venture capital.
They could have used “ be good” instead. Too high a bar I guess.
Hi Kiki:
Perhaps I make too much of my experience, but I did hear “Don’t be evil” as Google’s rather clever insider-speak which drew a line in the sand everyone understood without naming names.
Back then the ongoing drama in hi-tech concerned whether IBM or Microsoft was in control and what that meant to the rest of us. It was a personal passionate matter for many.
That’s a rather high and extremely unrealistic level of idealism.
–neo
I disagree. Unless perfection is demanded of idealism, I am more generous.
Stewart Brand softens his prediction that we will be “more” empowered, not perfectly so. Jaron Lanier envisioned “a web free of constraints” which is a vision, not a constitutional declaration.
The computer-web revolution has empowered us and offered alternatives far beyond anything possible before the 1960s. This particular forum, for instance.
However, the computer-web revolution didn’t culminate in utopia.
But nothing does.
Do we excoriate Christianity and the Founding of America for “extremely unrealistic level[s] of idealism” because there have been failures attached to both?
Lord Acton explained it all. “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
A lot of confusion comes from the assumption that a good rule of thumb for virtue is avoiding a commercial motive.
I’d say that selling something that actually belongs to you is morally neutral. We get into trouble when we take money in exchange for things that are not ours to give. Examples include accepting bribes to do things that conflict with our duty, selling stolen merchandise, selling the labor of others that was not given or traded to us freely, taking money for extortion, taking money for a protection racket.
Google wanted to turn at least enough of a profit to pay all its workers and expenses and generate a return on capital (otherwise there would be no more capital contributed). It could have recognized these as reasonable ambitions and admitted that it was in the business of selling a service for money, i.e., a commercial motive. It produced the service and was justified in selling it for money.
It could have avoided evil by not lying about how it was selling customer data or jiggering search results for money bribes or for political purposes
huxley:
I think you misinterpreted my remark. I didn’t say it because the internet isn’t perfect. I said it because I think it always should have been obvious it would be a double-edged sword, given human nature.
The Founding Fathers were well aware of human nature and its flaws, and had no such unrealistic expectations. That’s why they put all those checks and balances in there, and felt that the government would only work for a moral people. As for Christianity, likewise. It’s a guide for living and is not meant to be easy or to happen automatically. Christianity considers humankind to have a fallen nature that needs saving by a divine being (at least, that’s how I understand it). Any utopian future is placed in heaven.
This in particular seems naive and idealistic to me:
Empowered as individuals? What about all the groupthink and propaganda? What about the addictive nature of computers, and the means by which they enhance procrastination? What about the spread of old hatreds such as anti-Semitism, and the new and greater availability of hardcore and violent pornography, even to children? I think these things were fairly easy to predict. The internet does not make as all more empowered as individuals and cooperators – why would anyone think it would, unless that person were naively idealistic? It certainly does that for some people but not others, and both groups are pretty large.
Cornflour:
I’m assuming those quotes in the article were from a time very early in the life of the internet.
Wendy Laubach wrote: “A lot of confusion comes from the assumption that a good rule of thumb for virtue is avoiding a commercial motive.”
Interestingly, a pastor friend recently posted a similar themed essay on capitalism. Stated that many Christians believe capitalism is evil because it is not first & primarily based on the moral good — such as generosity. Rather, the capitalist system is based on freedom, which allows humans to express their personal morals within the earthly concept of fairness & competition.
I may add / correct tomorrow, when I can look up exactly what the pastor wrote.
Google has proven to be as evil as ibm re the uighurs in china while being unwilling to work with thd pentagon here
Maybe the person who first coined the expression/slogan was misunderstood. Maybe what s/he said is “don’t be equal.”
Marv–Yes, capitalism is based on freedom, meaning we can sell our goods and services for a market price if we wish, or we can given them away if we prefer. But if we give everything away, we have no right to force other people to feed us in our newly virtuous poverty. Other people may choose to, of course, especially if we are part of a tightly knit community who are dedicated to each other’s personal welfare, like a family, a commune, or a communal church.
But if they don’t choose to, then no fair sending the soldiers out in our name to expropriate other people’s food so we can eat the fruits of their labor. It’s “giving” only if it was ours to give, and it’s “accepting a gift” only if it was given freely; otherwise it’s theft, direct or indirect.
Too many people have decided that virtue lies in forcing other people to be generous so we can feel good about ourselves at little or no expense.
Nerdy idealism drove the whole of the current software-oriented tech industry. I think the founders of Google, et al. were just developing things that they believed to interesting. The original Google algorithm is very interesting indeed. The message to the engineering geeks at the time was to develop cool things and then worry about how to monetize them later.
I think the “Don’t be Evil” moniker came about at around the time that Brinn and Page began to discover that they were going to have to resort to selling people’s personal data in order to make any money from their creation – guilty-consciences perhaps? I think that led them to overstep further. They tried to atone for morally questionable monetizing strategies by using their technology to do what they perceived as “good.” The problem is that they lacked the wisdom to understand that (i) using creepy, underhanded tech to push fashionable elite political philosophy on the masses is not doing “good’: and that (ii) the fashionable elite political philosophy is not good and may well be evil. On top of that, the monetizing strategy that they pioneered ended up doing considerably more damage than they imagined by not only creating a real-life big brother, but also arguably destroying the press and replacing it with a pair of partisan echo chambers consistenlty starved for revenue.
The whole thing reads like a Greek tragedy. Brinn and Page just wanted to be cool, techy, and (probably) rich, yet they ended up doing extreme damage. The more they try to mitigate, the worse they make it. I think both the adoption of the “Don’t Be Evil” motto and its subsequent dropping show that they have some awareness of their predicament.
from their point of view, anyone who believes in the constitution, the bill of rights and the primary institutions are evil, don’t believe me, look at what they censor and what they let flow like radioactive sewage,
I remember altavista and maybe netscape in grad school,
The motto was simply childish. People who do bad things don’t start out by saying to themselves, “Hey, I’ve decided to be evil.”
My recollection is that 25 years ago the tech world seemed vaguely libertarian, as manifest in Wired magazine and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Certainly the street level IT techs I knew had no discernible interest in the political world. It wasn’t until about 2012 you began to hear about cooperation between tech companies and the Obama campaign.
It wasn’t until about 2012 you began to hear about cooperation between tech companies and the Obama campaign. — Art Deco.
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/277251-report-highlights-hundreds-of-meetings-between-white-house-and-google/
I believe Google CEO Eric Schmidt made over 100 White House visits. Not sure about that.
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close-relationship-with-the-obama-white-house-in-two-charts/
Love the Intercept’s Photoshopped image at the top.
Pretty sure they are the Evil Corp referred to in Mr. Robot.
In actuality, if not in the minds of the creators…
}}} My recollection is that 25 years ago the tech world seemed vaguely libertarian, as manifest in Wired magazine and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Indeed, those pioneers — and much of IT — were strongly libertarian at that point. Sometime during the 00s all that began to shift left. Liberals all took over many classical centers of power during that time.
One reason unionization has never gotten a foothold in developer circles — they tended to be, as suggested, largely libertarian, and still are to some extent. Far more so than any other group in the same age range as you’re comparing them to.
I used to think that was true of architects, too, because of their fondness for The Fountainhead, but it seems they don’t care about the political ideas, they just care that the hero is an architect.
David Foster,
Agreed. A reflexive bullshit detector is a good thing to have. Of course, one should always inspect and reconsider after the reflex.
“Be evil” (continued)…
Yep. Absolutely. I mean, why the hell not?
It’s ALL pluses. No minuses.
“Lee Zeldin attacker quickly released from jail — just as pol predicted”—
https://nypost.com/2022/07/22/lee-zeldins-alleged-attacker-quickly-released-from-jail/
And keep on voting for the guys that are on the cutting edge…of being evil…of encouraging it, of promoting it, of pushing it.
(And we won’t say ANYTHING about the Democratic-Party-driven Fentanyl epidemic….)
From Neo’s source article:
The tech firms’ often obvious hostility to conservatives – Gmail is even alleged to flag Republican fundraising appeals [carpet bombing] as spam – has unsurprisingly made them many enemies in the GOP, a party which once worshipped the capitalist elite.
Ha. Maybe I’ll switch to gmail. The GOP establishment is difficult to tolerate, let alone like. Anybody here politically donate through WinRed online? Boy that is awful. Be sure to reject all the tricks.
Oh it was definitely before that. Seeing Barry at Google in I think 2007 get asked a question about sorting and giving an answer that included bubble sort. I know it was supposed to make regular people think “Oh, Barry is smart” but all I could think was this was so fake. They must have planned ahead to ask that question and they told him what to say. (I mean what’s the chance he took CS102 so he’d know the answer and could remember it that fast and turn it into a bit of a joke? Basically 0.)
Back in the early days of search engines — ca. 2000->2004 — there was a search engine called “infind” — inference finder.
No idea how it worked, but it was literally spectacular — not a single alternative search engine even comes close.
I don’t recall a single case where I put in search terms and exactly what I was looking for was NOT on the first or second page.
*sigh* Eventually, it went under with all the other search engines that failed to get the right financial backing. I still miss it, 20y later, every @#$%#$^# time I have to slog through multiple pages of irrelevant and totally useless links, and try and refine the terms to tease out what I am actually seeking — and then give up because they are so ineptly designed that they are not even getting close to what I’m looking for, no matter what terms I put in.
Near as I can tell, none of them pay much attention to the ordering of words, to give preference to what is first, few pay any attention to quotes (i.e., to aggregate words into a phrase), and almost none of them allow forcing terms any longer, which means to exclude entries which don’t contain a given term.
The result is about a 30-60% effectiveness rate, unless you have some very very exacting and unique words available for the target/subject sought.
And even there, it’s subject these days to political manipulation.
For example, Google excludes, explicitly, any results from certain conservative sites like “Red State”. So you can search for an exact headline from a Red State article and Google will refuse to provide it.
Search Google for “Jake Tapper Fact Checks Jake Tapper” on google.
Now do it on Duck Duck Go.
Google won’t even show the article in at least the first 2 pages, if at all.
DDG, it’s like the first or second entry, because it’s the freaking headline FFS.
You should also read the piece — even if you don’t want to trust Red State because “bias”, it’s just stating self-evident facts with external verification:
Jake Tapper has openly lied about facts he knew the truth about. Openly. Indisputably.
There are other examples of this available for other organizations, where they’ve deliberately told lies and twisted verifiable truths to push an agenda which is at unquestionable odds with those truths.
I suggest remembering this because you use it to deal with assholes who deny that the merdia lies to you, and does so openly. You’re unlikely to convince them, but you will convince lurkers, and that’s what is actually important. That people see you in any argument/discussion as concerned with The Truth and as someone who seeks it out.
And getting people to recognize they cannot trust in the Merdia is a significant factor in opening their eyes.
David Foster–“The motto was simply childish. People who do bad things don’t start out by saying to themselves, ‘Hey, I’ve decided to be evil.'”
Yes, and literally childish in the sense that many people who do bad things start with resentment against the power their parents held in their lives and, as soon as they get a taste of money and power, decide that Rule Number One is “Don’t do anything that wouldn’t grieve your parents and show them a thing or two.”
They skip the part where they have to come up with a coherent system for deciding what’s actually good. Most don’t get beyond pretending not to be interested in money–even if their disdain largely takes the form of resenting how other people spend their money on their own priorities instead of catering to Me Me Me, the eternal infant.
Aggie, that’s distressing about DDG, but those stories seem to be about the browser. I was only referring to the search engine. I use the Brave browser (on my desktop, which is my preferred platform–haven’t gotten around to seeing if an iOS version exists).
“Lee Zeldin attacker quickly released from jail —
Well, it’s not like he did something really heinous like take selfies under the Rotunda or sit at Nancy Botox desk.
attacker quickly released
Just astonishing.
_______
Wendy,
I was going to respond to your first comments but it became a rambling mess. I hate to beat up on businesses and investors for making an honest buck. But venture capital and tech companies are a little different.
Venture firms often are a concentrated vehicle for the primary ownership, unlike just being a public company, and they don’t have a personal life and reputation investment like the founders do. Secondly, there is so much about these tech companies that is entirely opaque to outsiders and extreme powerful in possibly insidious ways.
_____
They skip the part where they have to come up with a coherent system for deciding what’s actually good. — Wendy L.
I was having a long conversation with a friend some years ago and the topic meandered from his points about there being no objective truth, only “my truth,” on to various issues of moral relativism. Then I recollect that he went to some genuinely dark places.
Days later, thinking about it, I had this epiphany. (Which may have been nothing of the sort.) I had a religious upbringing and was taught the catechism. I’m not a religious person now, but without taking a second to think, I know what people generally consider to be moral or immoral because it was instilled in my childhood vocabulary (for lack of a better word). (There are issues with that previous sentence that a person of the left would point out.)
But my friend, if he were to think back on his childhood about what is moral or immoral, I don’t think he’d find much. They just don’t have a very developed foundation or reference points for such things.
In retrospect, “Don’t be evil” was virtue signaling.
Also, FWIW, YouTube is owned by Google.
TommyJay: I was raised in an explicitly nonreligious household, but I have to say that my father (born in 1920) was not very reflective about philosophy and in fact had a rock-solid moral core, sort of absorbed from the old traditional atmosphere. It’s just that he was a scientist who rejected all forms of supernaturalism. As far as I could tell, he never tried to grapple with the ultimate basis for his moral convictions, he was simply ethical.
I absorbed the ethics and had to work out my own approach to where they’re supposed to come from. I’ve ended up a fairly doctrinaire C.S. Lewis-style supernaturalist.
Wendy,
Yes, I don’t think the important issue is necessarily the childhood religious instruction, but rather some sensible childhood ethical instruction.