The man who wrote "Don't be evil" said he chose it specifically so it would be hard to remove.
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The man who wrote "Don't be evil" said he chose it specifically so it would be hard to remove. Paul Buchheit, the engineer who later built Gmail, suggested the phrase at a Google corporate values meeting on July 19, 2001.
Then in early 2018, internal documents leaked showing that Google had signed a Pentagon contract to build AI to analyze drone footage. By April, over 3,000 Google employees had signed a letter to Sundar Pichai demanding the contract be cancelled.
The letter specifically cited "Don't be evil" as the standard the company was failing to meet. Dozens of engineers resigned in protest.
Sometime between late April and early May, the slogan disappeared from the code of conduct's preface.
@dbattistella The implication being: The new motto is "Go ahead, be evil."
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J jeppe@uddannelse.social shared this topic
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@dbattistella They also promised to preserve the 1st column research results.
But ads crept in and then search results were geared not to search but paying matters.
@NicelyManifest yes, and that reminds me of this bit by comedian Joe Fenti, that makes the point beautifully...
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Our collective, quarterly GOOG reminder: “Don’t be evil” establishes the lowest possible ethical standard.@weldon Yes, and apparently, even that low bar was a standard too high for Google
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@dbattistella I think we can learn from this that once a corporation grows large enough, it will inevitably do evil.
@eobet Absolutely, Professor of Economics, Justin Wolfers, explains what happens when we let people or corporations, become too rich/too big... it all becomes about power.
"Economists call this diminishing marginal utility. The first dollars change your life. The billionth doesn't. So the argument stops being about consumption and starts being about power."
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It wasn't too hard to remove the "Don't".
@EricLawton apparently not
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A quick search for 'eric schmidt commonwealth club' just brought up a photo of Schmidt dated 2013 June 04, titled "CA: Google's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt Speaks At San Francisco's Commonwealth Club".
Fits my (imprecise) recollection of the timing.
@oldclumsy_nowmad @js That tracks, he was the executive chairman of Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 2017. I think we can safely say Eric Schmidt chose 'evil'
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@dbattistella I don’t invest in any US stock mutual funds specifically to avoid google and Facebook stock. Between that and the craziness of the present US administration, most of our retirement investments are now overseas.
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@dbattistella So much for "code of conduct."
"Don't be evil" mah bear ass.
They were kinda having fun with the version names on Android too back then. I remember that easter egg art on Gingerbread
@reallylazybear Yes, for a while there they really seemed to be a benign company where workers were having fun serving their users... then Alphabet took over
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@dbattistella Thank you for this sharing this story.
It seems to be a real moto for a moment, so we should not blaming ourself in adopting too much google/gmail, another future was really possible.
Now, we should retract from using all these companies. It's not impossible. -
They could just have removed the 'don't'.
@riggbeck True, though that might have been too on the nose even for them
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@dbattistella
Today’s motto is still
“Make money”@JackMexa4 hmmm, possibly, though I suspect it's more along the lines of...
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J jowek@autonomous.zone shared this topic
