Hacker News Reader

The biggest problem with Google has been that they've been a "benevolent monarch", more or less.

The saddest part is that for the longest time I never minded them taking that role. The evil part is that they're subsuming their benevolence under sophistry to convince people to send them all of their internet activity. They're using up all their goodwill, and I'm not sure they haven't used all of it up as far as I'm concerned.

Once upon a time, Windows 95's installation screens had a bullet point that said, "Everything you do will be easier and more fun," when now we all know that a) that wasn't their goal; and b) they weren't going to make it that way anyway, but they'd sure be happy if "whatever you do" is on Windows and that you redefine your sense of "easier and more fun" to be whatever Microsoft decided it should be. These moves by Google remind me of those days.

It's times like this when I laugh and laugh about how smart all the people at Google are supposed to be. I guess one of the benefits of that to them is the ability to twist language to convince people to go against their own interests in giving Google all of their Internet usage behavior for cheap. Keep in mind companies pay BIG BUCKS for what Google wants you to give them in exchange for...access to Google+?

> One could make a very well-founded argument, for example, that Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, and even EA or Comcast are not, strictly speaking, "evil" companies.

I'll venture to say this is the case. Most tech firms are small-fries when it comes to evil.

Cargill, Monsanto, and pretty much any oil company - now that's serious evil. And that's just in recent history. We're not even talking the East India Trading company.

Wake me when a tech firm profits billions through sweetheart contracts on an unjustifiable war or, through ineptitude or malevolence, kills tens of thousands in an industrial disaster.

That's exactly my point. With a directive like "don't be evil" there's so very much wiggle room. If google spends the rest of its life hovering at a level above Exxon or even the East India Trading Company it might consider its "don't be evil" goal satisfied, but that's a pretty frightening future to imagine.

The problem with "don't be evil" is that it sets up the company to look hypocritical when it does something that could be construed as evil (or at least ambiguous).

Just like "it just works" for Apple - really super awesome, except when it doesn't - for large groups of their customers.

People may disagree on what's evil (especially when media companies can easily be "hired" to muddy the waters). Hypocrisy is much easier to detect and justifiably besmirches the brand value.

"Don't be evil" is equivalent to a guy walking around with a badge tht says "not a rapist"

Are you sure Monsanto is evil? As far as I understand, contrary to popular belief they only sue farmers who use their patented seeds if they also buy the pesticide that goes along with those seeds. Maybe they're evil for some other reason I'm not aware of?

Look into their role in the Agent Orange poisoning of Vietnam during the war. If that's not evil then the word has no meaning.

Are you kidding?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/13/genetically-modifie...

http://www.pressherald.com/news/Appeal-set-January-organic-f...

The latter is just evil. Suing farmers cause crops were contaminated through unwanted pollination by neighboring farms [using Monsanto's genetically altered seeds and chemicals]. Finally the farmers are banning together and counter-suing.

And this are just 2 examples. Do further searching and you'll find many more cases going back decades.

> The latter is just evil. Suing farmers cause crops were contaminated through unwanted pollination by neighboring farms

I already acknowledged that this view exists in the comment you replied to. However, I suspect this view stems from farmers talking to the press, and not from the careful reading of court records. See for example this quote from your second link:

> The judge also called the farmers' claims that they could be subject to patent-infringement lawsuits "unsubstantiated" because "not one single plaintiff claims to have been so threatened."

The Wikipedia article on Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser does mention that he was convicted without having used the pesticide, but the court did not believe the contamination was accidental in any case.

Intentional contamination or no, patenting genes and extorting royalties from people propagating self-replicating organisms is very much evil.

If farmers want to pay for seed stock of known features and quality, that's great. What they do after that should be totally under their control and domain. A legal precedent for interfering with the ancient practice of saving seed and selection of seeds from desirable plants is so entirely "evil" I can't explain it to someone who doesn't "get" it already. The evilness or any corporate control of genetics in the wild (outside of their production labs) should be self-evident.

I laugh at the audacity of garden catalogs that warn that you cannot take cuttings of certain patented items, like thornless blackberries. Blackberries are stupid-easy to propagate with cuttings, and it is completely absurd to think that people will (or should) obey such a warning.

> A legal precedent for interfering with the ancient practice of saving seed and selection of seeds from desirable plants [...]

This seems deliberately vague, and covers a lot of scenarios not covered by any court ruling I have seen. If you're going to call them evil, you need to do it with some specificity.

If you're proposing that we abolish GMO patents, I'd say that's a reckless policy that risks cutting off the funding source for increasingly important GMO research. There's probably going to be a couple billion more people on this planet, so it seems that we need better farming yields. Your arguments against the law seem to be on the form "the law is easy to break, hence it should not exist", which I think would apply to way too many laws to be a viable argument. If the law was hard to avoid breaking, I would agree more.

On the other hand, I agree that Monsanto's production of chemical weapons for the US government during the Vietnam war was probably evil.

Go earn you Monsanto pay elsewhere. This isn't reddit, we're not falling for your bullshit here.

Google's character was obvious to me when they insisted their slogan was "don't be evil" and not "do no evil".

A "do no evil" pledge is something that can be judged. Did they do evil by sabotaging the local 'yellow pages' in Africa? Was using their position on the board of competitors for their own advantage evil? This phrase refers to events and actions and facts, things that accountability is based on. Something can even be an honest mistake that does evil.

But "don't be evil" is an accountability dodge. Instead of judging actions and events it says to look at the company as a whole. Is an evil act threatening OEMs with no more Google apps unless they tow the line ok because it's all to 'unify Android'? Is it okay to sabotage privacy because otherwise Facebook will eat their lunch? Can two wrongs make a right?

The question of whether Google is evil is much more complicated and ambiguous than whether Google does or has done evil. That they insisted on not being judged based on their actions speaks volumes.

>"don't be evil" is an accountability dodge.

This is really, thoroughly missing the point. There was never anybody to enforce "don't be evil" -- if they had made it "do no evil" then there would still be no one to enforce it. It's a goal, not a law. If Google violates "don't be evil" then nothing happens differently than if they had never adopted it.

The point of "don't be evil" is to remind Google employees which end is up. It's something they can point to when someone else wants them to Do The Wrong Thing, as an official justification for refusing. If you think that means they're going to adhere to it in 100% of cases then you're liable to be disappointed, but I expect we're all still better off that they try most of the time than if they were to just throw it away and become comic book super-villains.

And your character was obvious to me the minute you said that "do no evil" is a more useful standard than "don't be evil".

"Do no evil" is an impossible and therefore pointless standard. How many people do you know that have done no evil in their life? Have you? I've certainly made my share of arguably evil mistakes.

Now consider a company with tens of thousands of employees. Even if 1% of their employees (intentionally or not, per your standard) committed evil at work 1% of the time, that's still (on average) multiple incidents a day. Exactly how many days do you think "do no evil" would last before it was drowned in noise?

Yes, "don't be evil" is a more complicated and ambiguous judgement. But at least it is one that can meaningfully be made rather than an unreachable standard that's trotted out when it's convenient and ignored when it isn't.

The doctor's creed is "do no harm" or "never do harm", even though it's impossible for a doctor to never ever cause harm. They have this oath because they want to be held accountable for their mistakes.

Doctors don't go around saying just "don't be harmful" or that as long as they have good intentions some harm is okay.

The simple fact is that formulation "don't be evil" is intended to avoid accountability. You can overlook some evil because you perceive them as having good intentions. Maybe you should consider that an advertising company may have put more thought into their motto and how it affects your perception of them than you realize.

> Google's character was obvious to me when they insisted their slogan was "don't be evil" and not "do no evil".

I thought the consensus was that "don't be evil" meant "don't be Microsoft" (of the 90s) which makes it a pretty easy slogan to be judged by.

Since you raised the issue, how exactly is a for profit and publicly owned company supposed to run effectively if not through a (benevolent or not) monarchy? Do you expect Google to put product decisions up for a vote?

I think you misunderstand. This isn't about actions, it's about power. Google is in a bit of an unusual position because it has a shit-load of power that it, mostly, hasn't abused for its own advantage, yet. Partly because google has been "good" many people haven't been overly concerned about their power and they haven't sought to try to limit that power (in all of the typical ways power is usually limited in the business world, through regulation, through competition, etc.) But on the flip side that means that there are very few roadblocks to google deciding all of a sudden to try to convert its power into cold hard cash, regardless of how it hurts individuals. Which may be something that could happen in the near future.