The day "don't be evil" came off their motto is the day they conceded they are evil. At least as evil as any publicly trading company has to be.
And despite the frequent misinformation, "Don't be evil" has never once left their code of conduct.
I disagree wholeheartedly. I think the web is much worse than it was ten years ago, and the trendline indicates that it will continue on that trajectory.
and also much worse as a developer (wow wtf javascript frameworks)
As a web user, though, it's substantially worse for me. Websites tend to have less substance and useful information, they tend to be flashier and harder to use, the ubiquitous tracking is completely unacceptable, and the web is becoming increasingly opaque and dangerous as more and more of it requires client-side scripting and the like in order to function.
As the web gets smaller and smaller for me every day, I honestly think that I'll see the day when the web is something that I will largely stop using altogether.
How?? For who??
The web in 2010: type something into Google, click first result, enjoy life
The web in 2020: type something into Google, try to figure out which results are ads, click several results before anything is useful, click through cookie disclaimer, refuse to allow notifications, decline to download the mobile app, attempt to dismiss surprise autoplay video that pops up once you scroll, except one of 30 scripts didn't load right or something so the popup's background stays covering up the page, disable javascript in frustration. Oops, now Cloudflare thinks you're a bot and all you're allowed to do on the web any more is teach Google's AI what traffic lights and crosswalks look like.
The web has turned into a nightmare for end users. I hope there will be a popular uprising of some sort, people saying that enough is enough, but I doubt it'll happen. Everyone seems happy about downloading gazillions of individual apps that are little more than wrappers for the web sites, just so the companies can get a better platform for poking around people's phones.
Of course I have. I used Ask Jeeves before Google even existed, and navigated via those awful web directory services before that.
I never claimed that Google "built the web", but that they've contributed to it. You're putting words in my mouth.
Is it really? I only see small marginal improvements in the technical side, and lots of losses in the freedom, privacy, quality of treatment as a customer or user, etc, side, a lot of them because of Google.
>And despite the frequent misinformation, "Don't be evil" has never once left their code of conduct.
Yes, it just left their actual conduct.