Hacker News Reader

Comment by droopyEyelids | Hacker News Reader

When you think about the power Google has, Don't be Evil is still a real value of theirs, and we should be grateful.

Most people won't even let themselves imagine what could be done with Google if evil was an option. How many hours would it take to compile a list of everyone who searches for incest porn and correlate that with 'people who are judges'. Considering that the incest fetish runs as high as 10% such information could be used to perform a bloodless coup. Call the legal system nullified, and lobbyists obsolete.

And that is just one facet of the simplest way Google could be used for evil (blackmail). There are infinite ways Google's information asymmetry could be exploited, and most of them would be completely invisible and 100% effective.

Thats why I'm glad we have Sergey and Larry running under the banner of "Don't be Evil." It shows that even from the beginning they realized they were going to wield terrible power, and they were a bit honest with that fact.

View on HN

and we should be grateful.

What? I don't believe Google is evil, but at the same time, I'm not "grateful" that they're not evil any more than I'm grateful that a driver isn't evil and doesn't run me over. Yes, I'm glad, but I don't feel like she's going beyond what she owes me.

This perspective is subtly dangerous, because it takes the consumer out of the decision-making process. When we see Google as an amorphous blob of power we're grateful to, we've already conceded the right to set the terms of the marketplaces we engage in.

Individuals should be concerned about the state of the marketplaces they frequent. There are great reasons for simple rules and regulations. Except for the ideal case, individual incentives differ with the incentives of those the market serves.

For clarity, I love markets. The market is the most powerful tool society has ever developed. But a lot of the benefits of a very free market are lessened when the number of suppliers is small. In truth, how many companies do what Google does, even on a specific product other than gmail? A handful of search engines?

The point at which google is doing us a favor by not being evil, instead of merely abiding by the law, is the point at which our expectations should be updated.

Exactly right. They've made a choice but it's a choice that they benefit from by getting people to use their products. It's not something they're doing purely out of the goodness of their hearts the way an anonymous donation would be (that would be something to be grateful for).

I think people feel good when they donate, and that is what causes them to donate. How is that any less selfish?

(However I also know I am pretty selfish, so I could be simply reflecting)

We really don't do anything without it making us "feel good" on some fundamental level. Motivation/intrinsic reward for behavior goes to the very core of our being as self-directed organisms. So asking "how is donating any less selfish than not donating" is asking the wrong question. We have evolved to take pleasure in behaviors that are beneficial to ourselves. One who is selfish will take pleasure in things that are solely beneficial to him or herself. One who is unselfish has a reward system that is aligned with the benefit of others. So when we say someone is a "good person" or "unselfish", we are really judging the alignment of their reward system as being more suitable for a social environment.

As an aside, note that this way of thinking is compatible with determinism: while the murderer may not have any more control over his anti-social behavior than the altruist, the person is condemned for having a brain wired in such a way that is toxic to a collectivist society.

By their nature, almost all economic transactions in a free market system are mutually beneficial to both parties or the transaction wouldn't take place. That does not mean that many companies do not make short-sighted decisions that harm themselves, their industry, and customers over the long term.

Here is a small list of examples which might serve as examples where decisions eventually hurt the company itself rather than only customers:

- early refusals to sell music, movies or television shows online

- highly inconvenient DRM strategies

- "closed software is more secure", and other non transparent practices

- cost cutting measures by manufacturers that reduce a product's durability in ways that are not obvious in the store

Google could monetize the information they can mine from their users more aggressively. They could also more actively depart from standards, such as by removing IMAP access to Gmail or requiring some proprietary plugin for Youtube. We'd be worse off, and Google would lose a lot of users and ad-viewing eyeballs. That still doesn't mean that it is a given that they would make these decisions. Facebook seems to have little reluctance when it comes to changing user agreements in non-obvious ways for the purpose monetizing their data, I switched from Yahoo mail to Gmail eight or nine years just because of IMAP, and Microsoft tried to push Silverlight for video content.

Even in the case of a cooperative game where mutually beneficial choices can be determined, that outcome is not always the result. What's wrong with being grateful that Google (at least some of the time) has apparently chosen such strategies? Claims that their benefit is somehow at the expense of users confuses the situation with noncooperative games, and suggests that Google would be better off not making the decisions that have benefited users, too.

> requiring some proprietary plugin for Youtube

You mean something like Flash Player?

Yes, I know, they are transitioning to html5, but not for everything.

Yes, I'm glad, but I don't feel like she's going beyond what she owes me.

Nobody owes you anything by default. We might agree to mutually abide by rules not to harm each other, but you are not owed anything for free.

This is part of "free markets", and indeed used to be part of being a citizen of a country; the country provides you with various things in exchange for things you give up such as some freedoms, some money, and perhaps other things too.

Given the norm of people being completely self-centered these days, and being proud of it on top, I think altruism should be applauded and encouraged whenever it happens.

As I read the OP's comment my first thought was "I know what he means but 'she owes me' is probably not the best way to state it". I think you ran off on an unnecessary tangent about the term "owes". The point was "I'm glad she doesn't run me over but that's something we should expect vs be grateful for given we'd like the same courtesy applied when we're on foot"

In what way is "Don't be Evil" a value of Google's? I mean, they're not going to get up one day and start shooting children with sniper rifles, I guess, but that's not their business anyway. Their business is making tons of money by collecting information both public and personal, and accruing power and influence for the benefit of their money-making as well as for the personal gratification of their top executives (because that's what people do). Do you think that when they see an opportunity to further one of these two goals the Googlers say, "but before we do that, let's stop and think long and hard about the ramifications of what we're about to do, and whether that action can be considered evil?" No, they don't. They do it, and then, if it does turn out to be evil, they explain why it really isn't. They wouldn't do it only if so many people would consider it to be evil that it would turn into a serious PR issue for them. So really, "Don't be Evil" is a motto at Google, but it's not a value. Their true value, if corporations can even have such a thing at all, is "Don't be So Conspicuously Evil That People Hate Us and Stop Trusting Us With Their Private Information or Too Afraid of Us To Let Us Benignly Spy On Them All the Time".

And as for blackmail, who's to say it's not already happening? But even if the Googlers don't personally blackmail anyone to advance their own goals, how hard would it be for a crime organization to put a Google employee on their payroll? I don't know what kind of security they hav at Google, and chances are it's the wrong kind[1].

[1]: http://xkcd.com/538/

Ignoring that i disagree completely about what Google's business actually is, "Do you think that when they see an opportunity to further one of these two goals the Googlers say, "but before we do that, let's stop and think long and hard about the ramifications of what we're about to do, and whether that action can be considered evil?" No, they don't. "

Actually, yes, this is pretty much what happens almost all of the time. People think long and hard about the ramifications about what they are going to do. That doesn't mean they always come up with the "right" answers, or that there isn't vehement disagreement, but yes, they do in fact, thing long and hard about it, and whether it is the right thing to do.

" I don't know what kind of security they hav at Google, and chances are it's the wrong kind[1]."

As you said, you have literally no idea what you are talking about.

Sadly you only need one or two people to not think long and hard for the reputation to look wobbly.

A Google engineer keeping too much data in the Google Mapping car; some Google employees doing stuff that gets their product penalised in web-search.

It's very easy for these examples to be picked up. It's a bit harder for the other stuff - which is often invisible - to be remembered.

That doesn't mean they always come up with the "right" answers, or that there isn't vehement disagreement, but yes, they do in fact, thing long and hard about it, and whether it is the right thing to do.

And so the definition of behavior that would qualify as "evil" varies even within Google itself, making the motto even squishier.

Of course it varies, but that doesn't change anything about the value. You really think the moral values of right and wrong are completely consistent across people?

The reason it's a corporate value is because it's part of the culture. There is an actual conscience at the company, and you try to hear, understand, and deal with concerns people have, internally and externally. You try to do the right thing, for the right reasons. The fact that you may not always achieve this, or that people may disagree on what the right thing is, changes nothing.

The outside problem is that most people think "Don't be evil" means "don't do anything I <the user> morally disagree with".

This would be a pointless value, as it would be both impossible and meaningless to achieve at any scale. There are plenty of moral values on which large populations of people have diametrically opposed views. For example, from the perspective of a large population of people, Google's stance on gay marriage is evil.

One problem is that it's a slippery slope. Effectively, the ethic would appear to be that anything and everything can be done/implemented as long as nobody involved calls it evil.

1. That isn't a slippery slope. A slippery slope is where once you start something, you can't stop it as it slowly erodes. In essence, once you start something down a slope, it will roll all the way to the bottom.

There is nothing about what you have said that demonstrates this is a slippery slope.

Maybe you meant to make the argument that once something is okay, you start down the path to everything being okay. This would be false, since outcomes, reactions, and viewpoints of previous things are raised when new things happen.

It's not a court where once a ruling has been issued, that is the rule.

2. I'm really trying to understand your concern here, but, as written, seems to boil down to "if everyone is a bad person, bad things can happen". Since I assume this is not what you are trying to say, could you elaborate a bit?

Each decision builds a foundation of a status quo, defined as the sum total of the "this is not evil" decisions and designations made in the past, which constitutes a form of momentum (especially among those who don't want to rock the gBoat).

This momentum is a force that affects the value system of the company's implementors and gating roles. It boils down to "bad things can happen even if everybody thinks they're working for good." Myopia becomes a bigger problem the older a company gets.

But for the reasons i've explained, it does not do this, and this is not how it operates in actuality.

Maybe if the company had no turnover, no leadership changes, no nothing you could make this argument, becuase it would always be the same people.

But it's not the same people, and even where it is, nobody sits around and asks "in light of us deciding this wasn't evil in the past, is it now okay to do X". That's not the question to be answered. It's not "is this evil in light of us having done similar things in the past", it's "is this evil". Don't get me wrong - The past is evidence, and data, for sure. It would be stupid to ignore reactions, viewpoints, etc. But the world changes, decisions look different in hindsight, society changes. If there was no evolution of thought, you would be right. But there is.

To expand on what DannyBee said, it can be a valid form of argument to say there is a slippery slope leading from A to B, but it turns into the "slippery slope fallacy" when it's not obvious how A necessarily turns into B and the possibility of a middle ground isn't acknowledged.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

Suppose for a moment that Google really is as benevolent as you believe. You yourself admit that they do have a lot of power. In a democracy, we try not to put too much power even in the hands of an elected official. Isn't it a problem that so much power resides with a corporation? Should society trust Google's good intentions?

But I even have doubts about Google's benevolence. What, a company that adopts a "don't be evil" motto is less likely to be evil than a company that doesn't? I'd be suspicious of a person that feels the need to declare that he'll do his best not murder anyone. By adopting the motto, Google had acknowledged the fact that corporations do tend to do evil. But is it because they intend to do so? Do chairmen and CEOs wake up in the morning all giddy about doing some evil or naughty, harmful, mischief today? Even Bernie Madoff didn't start out like this. And yet, corporations do evil in spite of people's best intentions. So Google said: we'll try to be careful. That's actually not bad, because I hope that that slogan makes the Google executives aware of the temptations and pitfalls that await all big firms. But I do not for a second believe that Google's executives are so much better than all other good people running large corporations that actually do evil. Because, hey -- power corrupts.

Nobody likes getting up one day and realize they've become a Bond villain, so they don't: that is, they just don't realize it. Also, nobody really is an actual Bond villain (well, Hitler). Even good people do bad things. My point is, people do need a little help from the outside to protect them from themselves, and with that much power, Google needs a lot of help. Google has become a big problem.

Should society trust Google's good intentions?

I would question whether society even knows enough about Google's intentions to be able to judge them as good or bad.

It's not clear what you are suggesting with the power questions. Breaking up Google?

As for whether society should trust Google's intentions: I hope not. Society should be, in general, distrustful of corporations, and, for the most part, they are. That doesn't mean Google doesn't have good intentions, or that one should assume bad faith everywhere. At the same time, what was questioned originally was the operation of that corporation and it's people, and that's what i responded to :)

As for the adoption of the motto: The original outside publication of this was done while going public, and was intended to make clear to wall street that Google wasn't going to maximize profit at the expense of everything else, where everything else usually involves doing morally questionable things.

I think you read way too much into it.

"But I do not for a second believe that Google's executives are so much better than all other good people running large corporations that actually do evil. Because, hey -- power corrupts."

All I would say to this is I hope you get to meet them some day. Except for one, I can say they really are better than all the other good people i've met running other large corporations. They are honestly good people, and honestly care about doing right.

In the end, I guess we just disagree. I don't believe Google has become a big problem, and I don't think Google needs a lot of help from the outside to protect them from themselves. In fact, I think help from "the outside" would make things a lot worse.

For example, the last time I looked, the outside wants Google to try to detect when people are doing bad things, and report them.

they really are better than all the other good people i've met running other large corporations.

Good, so they'll understand that no one, no matter how "good" should have this much power.

I also think that Barack Obama is better than most other politician, and that the US will be much better off -in the short term -- if he were allowed to operate without hindrance from that pesky, annoying, inefficient Congress that's just slowing him down. And yet, checks and balances are a good thing in the long term.

Augustus was a great ruler. Certainly much more efficient and benevolent than the senate. But he did effectively bring the monarchy back, and many of his successors weren't as good as him.

what you are suggesting with the power questions. Breaking up Google?

Yes, although we probably have a little more time (a couple of years, probably) before this becomes absolutely necessary. Also, we need regulation on companies holding personal information:

  - Limitations on what information can be kept.
  - FBI background checks on all employees with access to private information.
  - Top notch cyber security (I'm sure Google does that; no complaints there)
  - Maximum physical security, like access to private information only from certain, constantly monitored physical location.

the outside wants Google to try to detect when people are doing bad things, and report them.

Google doesn't oppose reporting on people because it's evil; they're opposed because it would be really bad for business. And while I do share Assange's concern about government surveillance, I'm much more horrified at the prospect of surveillance by a corporation.

I don't have time at the moment to reply substantively to the rest, and I don't want to shortchange. However, I will address one thing:

"Google doesn't oppose reporting on people because it's evil; they're opposed because it would be really bad for business. And while I do share Assange's concern about government surveillance, I'm much more horrified at the prospect of surveillance by a corporation."

This is false. I have first hand knowledge of why we oppose it. We oppose it because it's evil. It is bad for business, but that is secondary.

We oppose it because it's evil

Good. So you probably understand why amassing so much power in one corporation is evil in and of itself, even if the the people at the top have good intentions at the moment (whatever that means - I'm not sure most people share the same definition of good intentions).

The intentions of many influential people in government, including those at the very top, are not in the least bit less noble than those of Google's executives, and yet, while they may not always like it, they understand the necessity for checks and balances. Power must not be concentrated. Concentrated power is either evil, naivety or ignorance. It can never, ever-ever, be good, though it might have the appearance of good for a short while.

> In a democracy, we try not to put too much power even in the hands of an elected official. Isn't it a problem that so much power resides with a corporation?

No, it really isn't. If you pretend for a minute that Google is a hive mind, with a single individual in control of its actions, it still doesn't have a power to match the federal government of the US, or even the President (who is a single elected official).

You keep going down this track and pretty soon you are arguing that you can't have capitalism and democracy at the same time.

> But I do not for a second believe that Google's executives are so much better than all other good people running large corporations that actually do evil. Because, hey -- power corrupts.

The Don't Be Evil principle is actually a check on precisely this concern. By having it as a principle, it invites the executives to be challenged on this basis by everyone in the company. That is the entire point. Having a motto Don't Be Evil doesn't magically change the nature of your executive team. What it changes is how that team is challenged.

That sounds quite a bit like a "Good Intention"

There's a saying about a road covered in those...

While a nice sound bite, do you have a better suggestion?

They could give stockholders veto power over product changes.

I'm not sure I follow the logic. Large financial institutions hold a lot of stock, and their ethical track record is.. fraught.

For starters, they already have.

Larry and Sergey have the majority voting power, and they have veto power over product changes :)

But that's probably not what you meant, so i'm going to assume you meant give "non-preferred stock holders veto power over product changes".

I'm not sure what this would accomplish, since institutional investors are not exactly who you want deciding the fate of products. Timeline wise, they are too short term of thinkers. Ethically, they are often very suspect. Strategically, most lack the knowledge to make the right decisions, and even if you gave it to them, they lack the experience.

What you are suggesting is almost identical to hiring a large set of outside consultants, bringing them into a well-functioning company, and letting them veto every product decision at the exec level or below. Worse the consultants would be experienced in say "women's shoes", and the company would be one that did something like "making airplanes"

I'm pretty sure i know where this leads, and it isn't "don't be evil" :)

Hey, when you find that world where what is "evil" is so damn absolute that there needn't be any thought or debate as to what course of action would avoid doing evil, can you pick up a unicorn for me? I could use one.

All of your examples don't fall under the category of "Don't be Evil" but rather "Don't do anything Illegal".

Apple equally could ship every iPhone with a keystroke logger and a C4 explosive to detonate every time someone typed Android. Or Microsoft could modify their browser to record bank logins and secretly steal 1c everyday from their customers.

The point about "Don't be Evil" was to not do anything that was immoral but legal. I would consider Google's support of Motorola's behaviour in abusing FRAND patents to be an example. Or Google's deliberate ignoring of the Do Not Track advertiser setting.

Google also avoids paying tax on its huge UK earnings by shuffling the money between countries. That's presumably legal but it certainly isn't moral or ethical.

Obviously Google is not the only company that does this. Apple and other capitalist corporations do the same thing. But it's one thing to run a company based on naked greed and quite another to claim that you're somehow superior.

To be fair, corporations legally avoiding as much taxation as possible is a bit of a stretch for the evil claim. Corporate ethics wise it is more interesting why consumers want corporations to pay more tax as it effectively increases prices.

A better question would be posed to our governments on tax reform and simplification. But we all know the loopholes exist somewhat intentionally, otherwise they would have been closed already. The fact they're not getting closed indicates that our perception of what a company should pay and what they're legally obligated is basically wrong.

>Corporate ethics wise it is more interesting why consumers want corporations to pay more tax as it effectively increases prices.

Because taxes (help) pay for the negative externalities that arise from the corporation doing business.

>A better question would be posed to our governments on tax reform and simplification. But we all know the loopholes exist somewhat intentionally, otherwise they would have been closed already. The fact they're not getting closed indicates that our perception of what a company should pay and what they're legally obligated is basically wrong.

The problem exists because of the international tax framework, and getting the governments of all the jurisdictions involved to reform the tax system is harder than a single country unilaterally doing so - especially when it greatly benefits some countries at the expense of others.

Agreed, I'm not saying tax reform will be easy. Just noting that blaming corporations for exploiting, though thats a bit of a loaded term, perhaps advantageously utilizing existing tax structures is a bit naive. The incentives currently mean a corporation would be wrong to ignore tax breaks, that coupled with for example the corporate tax rate for money repatriation in America for example means that less tax income is generated at current law interpretation.

Basically is 35% of 0 dollars better than 10% of N dollars? In the US that is effectively our current dilema is it not? Our tax rates for certain things are so high people have no incentive to get double taxed in two disparate countries so they leave the money outside of any taxable entity. Improving the incentives to bring money back would seem to be a no brainer as it is a bit of a win/win situation to both sides.

As to disparities amongst countries, I'm not sure there ever could be a solution outside of some overreaching treaty agreements. Past that I'm sure there will always be a Caymans willing to lower their costs at the expense of the rest.

One solution to avoid the need to coordinate between countries is tax access to markets, meaning just use VAT. Of course there will be a need to collaborate on equal taxes between states.

But as people said here the loopholes are probably deliberate.

   why consumers want corporations to pay more tax as it effectively increases prices.

Simple. When was the last time you bought a 787 jet, tractor, industrial window washer or ordered 1000 tonnes of concrete ? People want ALL corporations to pay more taxes and are fine if the few products that they do buy are a tiny bit more expensive.

The fact is that most 'adults' understand that taxes pay for essential services such as education, infrastructure and health care. And during the tough times we live in aren't happy those services are being cut whilst corporations are making huge profits.

Remember this is people's day to day lives we are talking about.

Sure but my general question remains. Why do we denigrate the actors that are working in their own interests based on the incentives as given, when the denigration is the tax codes, and implicitly the people that create the tax codes that are the problems?

I'm not arguing that paying more tax isn't inherently beneficial towards the state(s), but if the incentive is to avoid the tax, and it is legal, I fail to see the problem at all from the viewpoint of the corporation.

> I fail to see the problem at all from the viewpoint of the corporation.

You're right, as long as the corporation doesn't mind if the public see it as a bunch of greedy, grasping, evil corporate bastards.

In Google's case, its "selling point" is "Don't be evil" and its business depends on trust. It's rapidly losing that trust.

For the record, Google's UK turnover in 2011 was £2.7bn, and based on its profitability, it's making about £676m and should be paying more than £180m in tax in that one year. In fact, it has paid a total of £10 million between 2006 and 2011 on revenues of £11.9bn.

If Google was a moral, ethical company then it would pay taxes that cover the cost of doing business in the UK, where it benefits from UK government expenditure on maintaining the country as a good place to do business (roads, schools, health services, police etc).

Essentially, Google is using fancy international book-keeping to defraud the British public.

That's evil in my book, whatever Google thinks.

But we must take account of the numbers. As Orwell might put it, 'some tax, good, more tax - double plus good'. Not exactly true is it? On the whole, (and this is not a zero tax argument) the following from Milton Friedman seems a truism to me.

“When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it.When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone else,he is still very careful about how much he spends, but somewhat less what he spends it on. When a man spends someone else's money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he buys, but doesn't care at all how much he spends. And when a man spends someone else's money on someone else, he doesn't care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that's government for you.”

Mitchy - we are not talking about avoiding taxes. We are talking about evading taxes. The "Don't be evil" gets a little tarnished with that.

I read once that there was a debate or something in UK about tax avoidance, and the official stand was that if a company can find and exploit a way to reduce taxation, they are entirely in their right to do so. Can't find the source though.

What's the moral and ethical amount of taxes they should be paying, then? And who decides what that amount should be?

I think most people would agree that where the line gets crossed is when products bought in one country e.g. UK have taxes applied in another country e.g. Ireland.

> we should be grateful

Jesus Christ, this is the top comment on Hacker News.

The sentiment is very similar to what you may hear in repressive countries: "Thank God, they don't do x to us".

This is very disturbing.

Eh, it's kind of like saying "I'm grateful that the hospital staff made me well instead of carelessly and greedily making my condition worse".

I think many people in this thread are forgetting that Google is a conglomeration of different people, opinions, etc., and it may not be as easily defined as the paranoid attributions given to the tangential predictions of one of its executives.

If Google really wants to "not do evil", they should actively work on removing themselves from this position of power they have. They should also work on making it impossible for any entity to obtain this kind of power. That is certainly a very difficult task, but there are little things that can be done and would make a difference (real support for freenet, bitcoins, or wikileaks).

Just gathering power is evil, because in a few years the temptation to use the power will be too strong.

Also being a public company complicates the strict "Don't be evil" logic. Shareholders, in general, doesn't care about being too ethical in a metaphysics sense.

It's time to think that private companies has a most promising ethical future than public ones.

I think you can only say that, if you measure this on a spectrum, they only have a wider potential range of evil:good. Any conclusion about clustering would be founded on an utter lack of data.

Don't be Evil is still a real value of theirs, and we should be grateful. [...] and most of them would be completely invisible and 100% effective.

You realize that these two sentiments are inconsistent? If Google could be evil without anyone knowing it, then you have no way of knowing that they are not evil.

The minute that anything even remotely resembling that happens, you will find the full force of the federal government and every possible legal resource come to bear on Google. The hypothetical that you stated isn't just related to judges, it's relevant to the most powerful people in the world.

Which is precisely why it won't happen. The people in charge at Google understand this existential threat and that is why every feasible cultural and technical safeguard exists to prevent this from happening.

That's assuming the government or certain agencies like NSA wouldn't already try to get Google to abuse that power in their favor, and be a very willing partner for them.

But the thing is Google has been one of the companies that has actively fought the hardest against such government abuses.

Others on the other hand are more than willing to do it. How long did it take Microsoft to brag to the Chinese authorities that they are on the Chinese government's side, just so they can gain 1% market share if Google was banned from China? A whole week? What about the partnership to create the surveillance tool that is TOM-Skype?

So yes, I think we could do much, much worse than Google.

So Microsoft is opportunistic. Big deal. Google was equally quite happy to "brag to the Chinese authorities that they are on the Chinese government's side" as well in the past. They just maybe didn't understand the implications of what they meant.

Yes. We could do much, much worse than Google. We could also do much, much better. But the fact is that every company is complying with the basic tenants of the law and that is all that anyone can expect of them really.

"And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness."

2 Corinthians 11:14-15

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

By that definition, "Don't Be Evil" is the same as doing nothing. Google can play up the not evil card all it wants, but that doesn't make them good.

Blackmail? try political suppression instead: there are many countries around the world that would shower google with money in exchange of information regarding dissidents.

Right now many countries in south america maintain armies of paid bloggers dedicated to smear the opposition 24/7 in social networks. This is incredibly labor-intensive, costly and not always that effective since even the dullest individual can see through the obvious propaganda copypasta of those hired guns.

If google wanted it could just charge those governments to shut the opposition from its services and give all their data from emails to files and social activity to the local police, which would put it to use right away with a devastating effect.

I think there is a good case to be made that we would have much stronger privacy laws if evil actions were more aggressive and obvious. The judicial and legislative bodies of the country will not put up with blackmail or attacks for long.

One of the problems with advocating for stronger privacy protections now is that so much of the harm is hypothetical. It takes urgency and crisis to pass legislation, and Google (and Facebook, and others) have done a good job preventing crises.

"and most of them would be completely invisible and 100% effective"

...

You realise that would mean they could be doing this right now? :P

Personally, I suspect they're not as I assume at least one person would have enough backbone to challenge them over it, so I don't think it's something they could legitimately get away with.

If the only qualification for not being evil is abiding by the law then jay, Google could be considered not to be evil. As long as their tax evasion practices are deemed legal that is.

But that is just a reflection of the low moral standards Sergey and Larry have. Instead of imagining what they could do if they committed senseless stupid evil on irrelevant perverts, imagine what they could do if they would actually do good.

They wield a terrible power, and worse the faceless public owners of Google wield it with them. If they truly were good, then the world would be a different place from what it is now.

Didn't they already change the world in a very positive way? I mean they've given access to information and cheap computing to everyone for free, including the third world.

Google access to information can be used for evil. But it takes only very small step to have the same thing reclassified as good. Take your example and let's say some eager attorney general declares war on obscenity, gets some laws passed by bleeding-heart think-of-the-children lawmakers and asks Google for data, which Google can not and will not refuse since it's not for evil - it's for the ultimate good of the children! And bingo, you just facilitated totalitarian state, where all you do online is now recorded by the government and can be used against you if they dislike it. And with the best intentions.

Let's face it, "Don't be evil" is nothing more than PR. Great PR, but still nothing more. Very few people actually do something they think is evil. Usually they only do what they had to do, or what they were ordered to do, or what the situation made them to do. And I have absolutely no doubt Google will do the same, and will if needed find reason why anything they do is not evil. Any of us is capable of it and Google is no exception.

True, but it's not in their interest to blackmail people. If people knew people who were being actively extorted in relation to their google searches then everyone would switch to Bing or DDG in a second.

It's really not just your google searches though - every site you visit that runs adwords is reporting your info back to google - just visiting a site directly can leak info, regardless of searches. Search history is obviously the low-hanging fruit, but Google's tentacles reach pretty far.

Yes, but if nobody trusts them then they would suddenly find life very difficult.

>There are infinite ways Google's information asymmetry could be exploited, and most of them would be completely invisible and 100% effective.

Then how do you know they're not happening?

They needn't have the desire to blackmail anyone. Collecting the information makes it available to the government who will do the profiling and blackmailing.

We should be "grateful" Google isn't evil? Who is voting this stuff up?!

People who don't believe in inherent human rights, apparently. If there's something to be gained by being evil, Google will be evil. Maybe not under Sergy and Larry, but Google will live on after they die.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com