On: A tale of how Google tried to win against Mozilla

[Angostura]

> only simple messages like 'make a profit' get through on average.

That was always the power of 'Don't be evil'. It gave employees official permission, perhaps even requirement to challenge decisions that could at least be thought of as being evil in some way.

It was a shame it was deprecated.

[itronitron → Angostura]

a colleague of mine pointed out many years ago that the slogan is not in fact 'Do be good' but rather just 'don't be evil'.

[tim333 → itronitron]

Be good is much more grey - all actions probably have some good but are not perfectly good. Whereas evil stuff is hopefully unusual.

[kibwen → tim333]

There's the fallacy, then: there's no law that says that evil actions are inherently notable or eyebrow-raising. It's perfectly possible, and indeed common, to do evil by doing nothing at all.

[QuercusMax → Angostura]

It's still there in the Code of Conduct: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/

Scroll all the way to the bottom. It's the closing thought, one of the key places to emphasize something.