Doctorow: Rivalry Keeps Google From Doing Evil

An anonymous reader writes "Writer and activist Cory Doctorow says competition keeps Google behaving ethically because it believes there are benefits to be had. However, as it moves into sectors where it faces fewer rivals this may not always be the case. 'It actually seems to be a quality metric. They believe they can attract customers, independent software vendors, resellers and an ecosystem around them by not being evil,' he says. 'Where they operate in narrower, less competitive markets — like where they’ve become an Internet service provider, for example — they abandon those commitments.'"

Comments

Monopoly

[PlasmaEye]

So, they are acting like any other company when faced with the same market situation?

Re:Monopoly

[93 Escort Wagon]

So, they are acting like any other company when faced with the same market situation?

While that is true, what's different is those other companies generally get reamed when they pull a switch like that - Google, on the other hand, gets a free pass from lots of people.

We see it happen here on Slashdot all the time.

Re:Google Do Do Evil

[Sir_Sri]

That's kind of it. Their business is in selling adwords and they do that by trawling as much data as they can about as many people as they can. All of their other businesses are either amusing side projects they haven't figured out what to do with yet, or they do evil in support of their main advertising business.

Anything that can't either boost adsense revenue or make money directly is eventually going to get cut.