
Google de-emphasizes 'Don't Be Evil' motto in its code of conduct - ourmandave
https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393
======
cma
Open instant messaging interconnectivity with third parties was canned.

Play Services won't install on unapproved devices anymore.

Sideloading apps doesn't work the same way on Daydream as it does for the main
Android system (can't launch non-Google Play store apps inside Daydream).

BS software patents on applying arithmetic coding to video compression.

Many webpages that only work on their webbrowser.

Long-con bait and switch as they morph into Microsoft of the 90s?

~~~
chii
You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The
Villain

\-- Harvey Dent , in The Dark Knight

~~~
ENGNR
Ironically Bill and Melinda Gates turned into sort of worldwide heroes,
targeting the big difficult unprofitable problems with the most social impact

~~~
zeofig
I disagree, and also Gates ruined computers for everyone forever.

~~~
sjwright
I disagree. If Windows were a lot better, the open source revolution might not
have gained quite so much momentum. If IE was a lot better—or rather if they
didn't let it stagnate—the very concept of installing alternative browsers
might never have entered the mainstream zeitgeist.

~~~
beenBoutIT
Same thing is true for Apple's OS, which for many serves as an expensive
several year pit-stop between abandoning Microsoft and embracing open source.

------
jkaplowitz
So the article ends by confirming that the "don't be evil" phrase is still in
the code of conduct, admittedly just at the end after a rewording. Its title
is entirely misleading, despite reflecting the original article.

Can this submission's title be changed to something like: "Google Deemphasizes
"Don't Be Evil" Motto in Its Code of Conduct"? That'd at least frame this
change accurately for discussion.

[Edit: I see the change was made. Thanks!]

~~~
rando444
placed randomly in a sentence at the very end vs. being the entire core of the
message is a rather significant change IMHO.

~~~
dragonwriter
> placed randomly in a sentence at the very end

“Randomly”? The very end is where you put whatever you want to be the most
important key summation and takeaway message of a document like this.

~~~
jfoutz
The old bury the lede technique. That’s widely regarded as being not so good.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The old bury the lede technique

The CoC is not a news article, and the dynamics are different there. And
burying the lede is when you mislead by putting a key point that shifts,
rather than summarizes, the understanding conveyed by rest of the article late
in a news article.

------
hapnin
It's almost as if Brin and Page predicted how bad it was going to get when
they first described Google:

“The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to
providing quality search to users.”

“We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased
towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.”

“Advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search
results.”

“Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines,
search engine bias is particularly insidious. A good example was OpenText,
which was reported to be selling companies the right to be listed at the top
of the search results for particular queries. This type of bias is much more
insidious than advertising, because it is not clear who “deserves” to be
there, and who is willing to pay money to be listed.” [0]

[0]
[http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html)

------
tsumnia
To play devil's advocate for a second - I don't mind this (that much).

The phrase "Don't Be Evil" seems like a kitschy nod to Google's earlier days
when they were just a couple of programmers in a garage. However, that was
decades ago and Google has grown into a more matured entity. This statement
comes from a time before Google had to meet with Government agencies on a
(probably) daily basis or start policing YouTube for terrorist beheading
videos and pornography. They are actively trying to do good - but they're no
different than IT - you only complain about when things go wrong, never when
they go right. Google does plenty of good, they don't need a snide comment
about how everyone else doesn't to do that.

To remove this artifact of the past isn't to say "it's time to start being
evil!". It's a child putting away their toys as they move to more mature
times.

EDIT: As someone mentions, the line is still there. Leaving my post up as it
still stands if they took it out tomorrow.

~~~
cptskippy
> To remove this artifact of the past ... It's a child putting away their toys
> as they move to more mature times.

That's just depressing.

~~~
tsumnia
By all means, I am still very much a child at heart... but I also know I
shouldn't go around telling everyone to "Suck It", like my WWF-watching
childhood.

~~~
waterphone
I think we can all agree that a positive ideological statement and goal to
strive towards is a little bit different than an immature insult.

~~~
gowld
Dividing the world into Good and Evil is childish.

------
dpierce9
Does anyone think that ‘don’t be evil’ is enough? Evil is basically the worst
someone can be. You can be bad, wrong, repugnant, reprehensible, vicious, and
malignant and still not be evil. Honestly, why is there so much credit given
to a company for saying ‘don’t be as bad as you can possibly imagine’ which is
a pretty reasonable translation of ‘don’t be evil’.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Imagine if it had said "Don't be immoral." Think of the discussion there,
whose morals? Googles? The employees? The country where the employee lives?

In my mind, it is largely aspirational because it takes a back seat to 'make
Google money.' Or perhaps making money is by definition not evil, so if you're
making money by what you are doing it is transitively not evil.

When I worked at Google, management explained it to be "Would you be
embarrassed to be a Googler if what you were doing showed up on an article on
the New York Times? If so then chances are its evil, don't do that." But then
came Project Maven, a sort of real world test, and well that is still going on
now isn't it?

~~~
gowld
Is it obvious that fighting a war of defense is evil?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Is it obvious that is is not evil?

------
lalos
I always thought the "Don't Be Evil" phrase was more like a don't be comically
evil. Don't wear black suit, boring logo and more imaginary related to an evil
person. Instead be fun, use kindergarten colors, use the fun noogler hat and
offices that look like playground. Evil seems like a cartoon-ish word for me
and feels like this was more of a reminder to the whole company that they are
doing some sketchy things with users' data so let's be sure to not be 'evil'
about it. If you think about it from this perspective a lot of the Google-way
of being makes sense.

~~~
Waterluvian
I've always thought the same. Where "Evil" is the comical caricature of evil
corp. Like what the 1984 Apple ad makes IBM/Xerox/Big Brother look like.

------
rando444
This is definitely something everyone has been waiting for.

The only question I have is.. why? One generally hopes that everyone is out to
do no evil, including those that do so unintentionally.

So why remove something that's been so closely associated with the company for
so long? Did some executive find it "tacky"?

At any rate, this is truly a loss for the internet.

~~~
dragonwriter
> So why remove something that's been so closely associated with the company
> for so long?

They didn't, per the body of the article (contrary to the headline.)

~~~
rando444
Yes, and if you read the article you'll notice the significant difference.

Anyone that was with google from the beginning knows the significance, and to
try to play off "hey they used it in a sentence" as some sort of passivity,
doesn't really grasp the depth of the change. (IMHO)

~~~
dragonwriter
> Yes, and if you read the article you'll notice the significant difference.

Yes, but neither the headline, nor the text of the article, nor any of the
commentary here so far mentions the significant difference in the excerpts
shown, which is only tangentially connected to removing gratuitous repetition
of the phrase “don't be evil.”

The signficant change is removing the value statement connected to the old
motto in the first paragraph of the excerpt from the older Code of Conduct:
“Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing
on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But
it’s also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law,
acting honorably, and treating co-workers with courtesy and respect.”

(Now, it's possible that those value statements were redundant with other
parts of the CoC or that the revision moved them to someplace other than the
place preceding the rest of the excerpt and that they retain equal prominence
in the new CoC, in which case the selection of the excerpt boundaries would be
another misleading aspect of the article. And you can even make the case that
they were largely redundant with the last sentence of the second paragraph of
then old—first of the new—excerpt, so that, while it's more significant than
dropping a few repetitions of “don’t be evil”, it's not all _that_
significant.)

~~~
rando444
Gratuitous repetition? Come on. It's been the unofficial company motto since
the beginning.

When they filed their IPO, it was one of the very first things they included
in the IPO

[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312504...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312504124025/ds1a.htm)

.. now it's been reduced to a footnote at the end of a sentence.

If you don't get the significance of this, you're either, very young, very
naïve, or astroturfing.

------
palisade
Clearly they're trying to guide internal ethics. "Don't be evil." suggests
that it is forbidden to be evil in all circumstances. How to read the new
guideline: "Do the right thing, even if sometimes it requires evil." Some big
event inside must have triggered this change in stance. Like a letter
requesting they capitulate on some requirement to protect or give up user
data, reveal whereabouts, key escrow, or something like that.

I guess what is confusing is how subjective "the right thing" can be. If an
employee were to cite this new slogan and try to address a problem with it, is
the right thing to capitulate or to defend. Who is to say really.

It almost seems like it is reworded to be more vague so higher ups can just
wave their hands and say these aren't the droids you're looking for. But, are
they waving their hands at employees protesting the mistreatment of customer
data and privacy? Or, are they waving their hands at the powers that be who
want unfettered access? I guess time will tell.

~~~
muthdra
> Some big event inside must have triggered this change in stance

I don't know what triggered the change in stance but this may have triggered
the removal.

Citing 'Don't Be Evil' Motto, 3,000+ Google Employees Demand Company End Work
on Pentagon Drone Project [0]

[0][https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/04/04/citing-dont-
be-...](https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/04/04/citing-dont-be-evil-
motto-3000-google-employees-demand-company-end-work-pentagon)

~~~
palisade
They changed to "Do the right thing" from "Don't be evil" back in 2015 long
before the 3000+ employee protest against the Pentagon drone project. I doubt
this is the event that triggered the change in stance.

~~~
muthdra
You are right.

~~~
palisade
The objections to the project internally could have been brewing for years,
though.

~~~
gowld
Years before the DoD project was invented and the contract proposed?

------
imranq
I liked the old google of the 2000s, focused on search and being scrappy and
quirky. Now it’s super corporate without any real identity as far as I can
see.

------
omarforgotpwd
“Don’t you think making AI that poses as a human is unethical? Isn’t our motto
don’t be evil?”

“You’re right Johnson. Take that don’t be evil line out”

~~~
whataretensors
Can you elaborate why making AI pose as humans is unethical?

~~~
omarforgotpwd
Humans have a right to know whether they are talking to a human or a machine.
Even the benign example of restaurant hours -- maybe the guy was willing to
tell the restaurants holiday hours to someone who is wondering, but DOES NOT
want it posted to Google bringing in more customers and forcing him to stay
longer on the holidays. I don't know, it's a contrived example but it's not
the right approach to say "why should they have a problem?". The right
approach is just to tell them and let them decide whether they have a problem
with it or not. Anyway this is kind of a moot argument because Google has said
that they will tell people the call is coming from Duplex, so Google itself
has conceded that people have the right to know they are talking to a machine.
It is somewhat unfortunate that people care about this from a software
perspective though, because it probably is beneficial from a "learning"
standpoint to have people just speaking as they would to a real human.

~~~
wilsonnb
You can't just declare that humans have a right to know if they are talking to
another human or a machine. That's just restating what you already said. You
have to justify _why_ humans should have that right.

~~~
omarforgotpwd
We don't really have any "rights" at all, a right is just a concept that
refers to the expectations humans have of each other and what is and is not
okay to do. For example you may have a right to life to but you could still be
murdered. Conceptually your rights have always been more than just what the
law currently says. The US Declaration of Independence famously declared that
all men are simply born with certain inalienable rights. That's just one way
of looking at things, but it's an idea that kind of caught on.

Nobody declares our rights, we feel them in our guts. And the public feels
this one in their gut without me having to explain it, which is why I call it
a right: If something is generally accepted by the public, it is a de facto
right. For example you could repeal the 1st amendment tomorrow but that
wouldn't change anyones mind about whether freedom of speech is their right.
But if you want me to stop being pedantic and actually defend my position, I
would argue that people should have this right so that spammy AIs don't just
ruin human interaction all together. Imagine a world where you never know if
you're talking to a real person or some kind of AI trying to sell you
something subtly... Not knowing explicitly whether you're talking to an AI or
a real human could have a chilling effect on human-to-human relations.

------
naikrovek
I thought they did this years ago. I distinctly remember a big kerfuffle over
it.

~~~
jaredsohn
Read the article, it gives the history on this. (Basically the motto was
replaced by "Do the right thing" when Alphabet was formed in 2016 and this
article points out that the language was recently removed from the code of
code, although in reality it was just deemphasized.)

~~~
sjwright
"Do the right thing" is not even remotely the same as _don 't be evil._ The
former is highly contextual; the latter is an appeal to our shared morality.

~~~
gowld
What is our shared morality? If shared morality existed, there would be no
Evil.

------
dragonwriter
Source title is misleading clickbait [0]: as the text of the article makes
clear, Google rewrote one section of its Code of Conduct in a way which, among
other things, removed the phrase “don’t be evil”, but retained that phrase in
another (more prominent [1]) place.

[0] which is necessary to pretend there is anything even worth having as a
story here at all. “Google updates Code of Conduct; reduces number of
repetitions of phrase ‘don’t be evil’” is an obvious nothingburger.

[1] the final line; in any long document, the very beginning and very end are
the most prominent.

~~~
rando444
Removing the company's unofficial motto, and mixing it in with a random
sentence at the very end is 'more prominent'.

Hmm.. I'll believe Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, before I
believe that.

Also using "nothingburger", a prominent phrase used by Trump supporters to
lampoon the Muller investigation is an interesting choice of words.. but fits
very well.

You have a strange agenda, friend.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Removing the company's unofficial motto, and mixing it in with a random
> sentence at the very end is 'more prominent'.

It wasn't mixed in (the article itself notes it was retained unchanged) and
the final sentence isn't a random placement but, along with the first, one of
the two most significant places in a long document of this type—the beginning
is where you put meant you want to shape the reading of the rest, the end is
where you put the most important high-level key takeaway.

> Also using "nothingburger", a prominent phrase used by Trump supporters to
> lampoon the Muller investigation

I've actually never noticed in that context, apparently it's a big thing on
Twitter in that context, but I'm quite selective of my consumption in that
channel.

But the terms been in use for 60+ years.

> You have a strange agenda, friend.

What agenda is that, then?

~~~
rando444
I have no idea what your agenda is, but trying to say that removing all
references of the companies former official motto and mixing it in at the very
end of a sentence of their core of conduct somehow makes it "more prominent"
is literal nonsense.

One hopes you have an agenda.

------
godzillabrennus
I think this motto became fairly diluted as far back as when Google went to
China.

~~~
malloryerik
I had understood that the motto was heavily involved in the decision to leave
China.

------
muzani
I felt that when they started the "Don't be evil" motto, it was sort of a
declaration of war on big boy Microsoft, which was seen as the evil
alternative.

They're now about the same size, do similar things that people once criticized
Microsoft for, and Microsoft is seen in a much better light now. The motto no
longer applies.

~~~
reitanqild
Repeating history, including using dominant position to push their own
browser.

------
balthasar
More of a marketing phrase than a code of conduct. Google realizes the sham is
up so there is no use pretending anymore.

~~~
twothamendment
I agree it was more of a marketing phrase. The code of conduct is more likely
something like "Only do evil if it makes good money and don't get caught."

~~~
rando444
Isn't the bigger question though, why not continue marketing?

~~~
twothamendment
At some point it begins to be obvious when marketing is full of it - I think
they passed that point and had to accept what everyone already knew.

------
kevinclancy
My guess is that they realized it fits into the "corporations are evil"
narrative that has become popular with many angry people on twitter recently,
and then decided they didn't want to feed into it.

~~~
archgoon
> "corporations are evil" narrative that has become popular with many angry
> people on twitter recently

I'm fairly certain that narrative, and it's popularity, precedes Twitter by at
least a few years.

Here's an Atlantic article that details a bit of the history:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/evil-
co...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/evil-corporation-
trope/479295/)

------
throwbacktictac
I always thought the slogan was odd. In my mind evil is the absolute negative
end of the spectrum of good vs evil. Why not something more positive sounding
like "Do good"?

~~~
icebraining
They use "Do the right thing" in their corporate code of conduct:
[https://abc.xyz/investor/other/code-of-
conduct.html](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/code-of-conduct.html)

------
Karupan
Good thing it’s gone, they won’t have to pretend anymore.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Consider how much time and effort they can save not pretending. They can
censor political opinions all day long.

------
mudil
Total monopoly on search on the internet. Duopoly with FB on the internet
advertising (85% belong to them, 15% belong to the rest of publishers, big and
small). Rampant violation of privacy of billions of individuals. Destruction
of journalism and small internet-based publishers who cannot compete against a
monopoly that follows people everywhere.

Evil corporation all around.

------
awat
Hmm I’m on the fence on what this means exactly. Wording change seems to be
fairly innocuous but the visuals here are not good.

------
Jerry2
Also, from yesterday: _Google’s Selfish Ledger is an unsettling vision of
Silicon Valley social engineering_

> _The video was made in late 2016 by Nick Foster, the head of design at X
> (formerly Google X) and a co-founder of the Near Future Laboratory. The
> video, shared internally within Google, imagines a future of total data
> collection, where Google helps nudge users into alignment with their goals,
> custom-prints personalized devices to collect more data, and even guides the
> behavior of entire populations to solve global problems like poverty and
> disease._

> _When reached for comment on the video, an X spokesperson provided the
> following statement to The Verge:_

> _“We understand if this is disturbing -- it is designed to be._

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-
selfish...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish-
ledger-video-data-privacy)

~~~
gowld
> This is a thought-experiment by the Design team from years ago that uses a
> technique known as ‘speculative design’ to explore uncomfortable ideas and
> concepts in order to provoke discussion and debate. It’s not related to any
> current or future products."

> Google prompts users to select a life goal and then guides them toward it in
> every interaction they have with their phone.

~~~
Jerry2
Thanks, Google PR.

------
m3kw9
Yep no longer applies, 5 years late

------
imleft
Google scary video: [http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/google-selfish-ledger-
vid...](http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/google-selfish-ledger-
video-3475446)

------
8bitsrule
"everything we do in connection with our work at Google will be, and should
be, measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business
conduct."

As measured against Goldman-Sachs.

------
imleft
Google mgt was asked to mandate equality and diversity.

They said no!
[https://i.redd.it/htqi8nuk6xx01.jpg](https://i.redd.it/htqi8nuk6xx01.jpg)

------
boxcardavin
As with laws, rules are made up by people and followed by some.

~~~
jopsen
> As with laws, rules are made up by people and followed by some.

That still seems way better than the alternative.

------
sunstone
And replaces it with "Don't be naive".

------
deadelvis
[https://imgur.com/a/6sNdIZt](https://imgur.com/a/6sNdIZt)

------
Taniwha
Apparently they've decided there's increased shareholder value in being evil

------
greggarious
This is why I use DuckDuckGo

------
kkotak
Absence of one doesn't prove presence of the other. But I digress.

------
rinze
It was this or manipulating all search results for "evil".

------
oh-kumudo
It is better to keep it as a lie. Time for Google to grow up.

------
rusk
Was beginning to sound a bit disingenuous anyway ...

------
hexane360
Ironic that you uploaded this with an AMP URL

------
stgnet
Some video evidence:
[https://youtu.be/I7wwhsDJECw](https://youtu.be/I7wwhsDJECw)

------
balthasar
More of a marketing phrase than a code of conduct. Google realizes the sham is
up so there is no use pretending anymore.

------
foxfired
That's the problem with don't be evil. You can only remove it when you become
evil.

~~~
cptskippy
So... Takes one to know one?

------
technotarek
Served by (evil) AMP!

------
Fjolsvith
Roll the evil laughter...

------
jadedhacker
I'm guessing they're not happy about the whole drone assassination debate
going on internally. It's so disadvantageous that their staff can call the
leadership outright hypocrites based on their own professed values. This makes
everything so much easier for everyone.

Information on the drone program: [https://theintercept.com/drone-
papers/](https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/)

Google's complicity in Project Maven:
[https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1254719/project...](https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1254719/project-
maven-to-deploy-computer-algorithms-to-war-zone-by-years-end/)

Google's Internal Debate:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-14/inside-
go...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-14/inside-google-a-
debate-rages-should-it-sell-artificial-intelligence-to-the-military)

~~~
rando444
Thanks for this. I actually had not seen this.

Very remnicient of IBM's involvement in the Holocaust.

~~~
sa46
Under what circumstances is it acceptable for a company to provide services or
software to a military?

~~~
jadedhacker
I think it's pretty obvious: when there's an obvious military threat that
would have implications for civilians (e.g. invasion, blockade, etc), the
software is tailored to that need, and the military is not currently engaged
in multiple offensive bloody wars based on lies with a long history of doing
so.

~~~
sa46
What about non-obvious threats? Generally speaking, nations that fall behind
technologically fare poorly against more advanced nations.

What about software that is adapted by the military for new use cases instead
of tailored use cases? Should Microsoft be responsible for damage caused
operations planned in Word and PowerPoint? What about iPhone with sniper
windage apps? How many layers removed before a company is considered ethical?

~~~
jadedhacker
You're right that you can get into morally gray areas, but if the military is
using applications that are available to ordinary consumers, businesses, and
governments worldwide, it's not really giving them an edge now is it?

We should focus our criticism on people that are doing bad things and know it.
We don't need to dive into the most murky territory in order to achieve worthy
effects when there's so much low hanging fruit.

With regards to novel threats, it'd be nice if the military could justify
these investments without resorting to propaganda, and outright lies. There
should be a clear explanation that most people would understand the necessity
of and how it works in their interest.

~~~
nradov
While I support a lower military budget and less interventionist foreign
policy, the reality is that it's impossible to publicly justify some
investments without revealing classified information that would put
intelligence sources at risk. If we're going to have a military at all then
people have to be willing to delegate those investment decisions to their
elected officials and operate on a need-to-know basis.

------
horseLOGIC
The headline is of course wrong, they didn't remove it fully, they removed it
from one paragraph.

More interestingly, they removed another sentence from that paragraph:

"[...] providing our users unbiased access to information."

In other words, Google wants to crack down on wrongthink without violating
their own code of conduct.

~~~
Jyaif
I damn sure want some of my search results to be biased, e.g. when searching
for "string".

That sentence was stupid right from the beginning.

~~~
horseLOGIC
Do you, _really_? When do you ever search for just "string"? You're going to
add some context, like "split string C++".

Now maybe you'll say Google should know you're programming in C++ all the
time, so having learned that, Google should be able to infer that when you
type in "split string", the results should all be for C++.

Except then somehow Javascript comes into your requirements and now you need
to retrain _your Google_ to give weight to that.

I'd much rather be able to use _the Google_ , not _my Google_ , so that I get
more predictable results. It's already annoying that I can't tell people to
google something and be sure whatever I'm talking about is in the top ten
results of _their Google_.

> That sentence was stupid right from the beginning.

Nothing about that sentence was stupid and it's frightening that you don't
seem to understand the ideal of being "unbiased" (as in "unbiased reporting").
We're going to be heading in the direction where's there's "liberal" and
"conservative" _search engines_ , causing even more polarization of our
collective world views.

------
yuhong
I wrote an entire essay about one problem:
[http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2018/04/google-doubleclick-
mozi...](http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2018/04/google-doubleclick-mozilla-
essay-final.html)

------
whalesalad
Slow news day.

