Slashdot Mirror
Google As Alphabet Subsidiary Drops "Don't Be Evil"
CNet, The Verge, and many other outlets are reporting that with the official transition of Google (as overarching company) to Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, Google's made another change that's caught a lot of people's attention: the company has swapped out their famous motto "Don't be evil" for one with a slightly different ring: "Do the right thing." Doing the right thing sounds like a nice thing to aspire to, but doesn't seem quite as exciting.
Which road was that again?
Program Intellivision!
That being evil is the right thing to do. You know, ends justify the means and all that jazz...
Considering what they've been up to with GoogleIdeas featuring online harassers to help them strategize how to deal with online harassers, this was an obvious next move.
I guess if you've dropped "don't be evil" and adopted "do the right thing," the answer is pretty clear.
"....for the stockholders' wallets."
I know I won't be holding my breath here!
“Don’t be evil.” Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But “Don’t be evil” is much more than that. 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 each other with respect ref.
While I appreciated the sentiment behind "don't be evil", I was surprised that a company had the word "evil" in its motto, regardless of the context.
I smell Altavista coming back on-line. I remember the day when the telephone company tried to kill me....
It's been obvious for several years they haven't been using "don't be evil" as any sort of guiding principle anyway. Then and now, it's just a motto - useful for PR purposes but not much else.
#DeleteChrome
Do the right thing... for whom? Without a specifier it does not tell us anything. It is definitely not the same as "don't be evil", although we've figured out that Google has not followed that mantra for a while now (not at Apple levels yet!).
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
In the new NBC series "Heroes Reborn", the big bad corporation, Renautas, is in effect torturing an "evo" (a person with powers) to use her powers to enable a system that can locate all other evos on Earth, so that they can be rounded up. Their corporate motto? "Doing good is good business."
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
Even though Google is underneath Alphabet, its own, more specific code of conduct remains largely the same, and it retains the "don't be evil" motto. And since most of Alphabet's employees work at Google, that means "don't be evil" is still very much alive and well in Mountain View.
It is just Alphabet that is dropping it.
Both are based on subjectivity. What is evil to some is good to others, what is right to some is wrong to others, etc. Google's behavior to date vs the criticisms it has received is evidence of this.
"Do the right thing" according to whose standard of ethics and morals? If as an example, a society believes that the weak should die 'for the greater good', and that 'might makes right', and that 'stealing is OK so long as you don't get caught', then "Do the right thing" means something entirely different than it would in a society where the opposites are true. My point being: "Do the right thing" is extremely vague to the point of being meaningless -- unless you back those four words up with specifications of what it means to you .
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
... has swapped out their famous motto "Don't be evil" for one with a slightly different ring: "Do the right thing."
So now, in true Machiavellian true-believer fashion, they can comfortably be evil as long as they're being evil to do the Right(eous) Thing... whatever that is.
... for who?
Can anyone explain to me why Millennials are so gung-ho about "codes of conduct", and why they're so hypocritical about them?
To see what I'm talking about, read these comments about the creation of an open source code of conduct template.
It's unbelievable. A number of the participants in that discussion claim to be against discrimination, yet they're actively pushing for it to be deemed completely acceptable to discriminate against people who happened to have been born with white skin and a penis!
To many Millennials, a "code of conduct" isn't something to help keep social interaction civil. It's actually a weapon that they use against those whom they dislike.
Conveniently right? "Right" is more nebulous than "not evil".
Evil, outside of special pleading for a particular belief system, is usually framed in terms of actively choosing the harm of others (even if it is masked in deniability). There's some very important meaning in 'don't be evil' that I always liked. Even if some evil is deemed unavoidable by sheer weight of circumstances in life, the general policy should still be to avoid it if at all doable, by any philosophy I'd respect..
"Do the right thing", however, is utterly subjective. Genocide can be seen as the right thing, by a great many, many belief systems, as could complete elimination of all other belief systems. Complete stagnation lies down most 'pure' roads. Utter evil, the complete willingness to harm others at a whim, is constantly 'justified' in the name of most ideals taken in isolation.
I suppose that's a problem with business groups though - the more people involved, the more push to 'optimize' towards some ideal that gets so important, that 'evil' is no longer a limitation. All groups do evil, because there are people involved, but most businesses seem to become blind to their own evil as they grow, until they specialize in mostly doing that evil. Well, until those outside the group start reacting to their actions, then they seem to asymptotically bounce against, and push out the ethical line.
Fortunately, the end result isn't so horrible, by most standards, basically ever measurable aspect of culture has reliably improved over time, from freedom, to intelligence scales, to health and others - but it's just interesting how groups specialize and play such strange roles.
Ryan Fenton
Until someone decides ... That being evil is the right thing to do. You know, ends justify the means and all that jazz...
(At the risk of precipitating a storm of posts misapplying Godwin's law...)
One of the big problems with tyrannical systems and the tyrants who end up running them is that they're attractive. The rhetoric sounds nice. The people setting then up and running them are sweet, reasonable-sounding, and persuasive (at least at first and/or to those they need to support them to obtain and keep power), and so on.
Then, after they've driven their "nice" ideas into their horrible, but inevitable, ramifications, and (if they) are eventually stopped, the historical record ends up showing you just their opponents' propaganda, painting them as obviously hateful. So people get the idea that bad uses of power LOOK repulsive. Then they don't recognize similar stuff when it develops in the future (or even the SAME stuff if it reappears - as one high-school history teacher showed by using Hitler Youth techniques on his class for a week, with just enough deltas to make their origin not recognizable until after the great reveal.
IMHO the change in motto from "Don't Be Evil" to "Do the Right Thing" is a (probably accidental, but nonetheless actual) giant leap down "The Road Paved with Good Intentions".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Maybe, just maybe, (sometimes, but only if the conditions warrant it), being evil is the right thing to do.
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
Is it just me?
"Don't be evil" is like said "Don't commit crime".
It's stupid, obvious, and pointless to say. It should be obvious.
"Do the right thing" is much, much, much more difficult to do and something that happens much less often.
Not that it matters, it's a fucking company motto, which means nowhere near as much as they've spent on consultants to come up with that bollocks.
But in terms of semantics, this is an upgrade, if anything.
They did the right thing...and decided to be honest.
We have been doing evil for a long time now and it is time we come clean. We are a corporation and as such are legally obliged to make our shareholders money. Sometimes it comes as collecting data on you to sell better ads. Other times it is making spying software for the government using your tax dollar.
Really? Like charging them for a service that you won't fix the bugs in? (base)
Really? Like forcing everyone to remove their copyright info from images so you can use those images to benefit competitors who pay you more (base, again)
Really? Like never adding the most basic, 1990s-old commonly used features to GMail?
Really? Like classing websites according to your anti-sex moralistic bullshit and then locking those people out of earning a living?
It appears to me that not only do you (Google, Google employees) not apply "those words", you have no bloody idea what they mean.
You can go back to making your money-driven search results now. Cuz, hey, THAT is "serving your users" (up on a platter, that is.)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Without the "Don't Be Evil" mandate, Google can now do all sorts of wonderful things like collecting data on every mouseclick and page visit, correlate it with your credit card spending data, insurance records, search history, phone records, mortgage info, geo-tracking data, and use it to flood you with tailored ads. Oh, wait, they already do that.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
far from "slightly different", these are polar opposites.
this is mitosis. ...and as the hurricane said to the palm tree - guard your nuts, this is no ordinary blowjob
brendan o' carroll
'Don't be Evil' has been a sad joke since Schmidt joined - and yes, it was made 'official' only after he joined (the 2004 IPO letter).
As long as you've got a Bond villain running the thing it's just a cynical publicity ploy, typical Bay Area 'activism'.
The old motto "Don't be evil" has always bothered me because the phrasing encompasses two negative things. It is my understanding that the subconscious mind tends to ignore words like "don't", and only focus on the rest of any statement that includes it --which in this case would be a statement that is still a negative thing! So, the new motto "Do the right thing" is, in my view, a vast improvement over the old one. Sure, the subphrase "right thing" is open to interpretation, and we can be sure that sometime someone will choose a problematic interpretation, but for the most part it is quite a positive motto.
Do the right thing... for whom? Without a specifier it does not tell us anything. It is definitely not the same as "don't be evil", although we've figured out that Google has not followed that mantra for a while now (not at Apple levels yet!).
Do the right thing is more appealing as a marketing slogan because it caters to people who are stupider and more plentiful. It's useful for reaching them. It doesn't even admit to the possibility of evil, It's much more cliche, it probably tests better with focus groups, it's not quite as easy from a communications standpoint to be mocked with it, and it's even easier to make it mean whatever you want and trot it out to use as part of product launches--better, it's designed to do that *without* making someone think about whether something is evil. So suppose you have a business model built around collecting all the knowledge on the planet, monitoring communications, monitoring web sites, fundamentally monitoring behavior... and you want a nice, innocuous little logo.
They're a good company, but their business model is inherently at high risk for evil and abuse of power. So shifting away from the idea of evil is a good marketing decision.
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."
C. S. Lewis
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
I know of the quote, but isn't it ironic coming from a monotheistic Believer that penned the Chronicles? The Christian God is the ultimate tyrant. Was this quote a momentary bursting of his bubble?
Google As Alphabet Subsidiary Drops "Don't Be Evil"
Why are we still continuing the tradition of writing headlines in weirdly mangled and abbreviated English with stupid capitalisation?
Google, as an Alphabet subsidiary, drops "Don't Be Evil"
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The beauty of "do the right thing" is that you no longer have to be seen to be claiming the moral high ground. I wonder who they will be doing the right thing to or for. On the bright side, Goog's mission statement of doing the right thing will now be more accurate - literally and figuratively: if you are a shareholder.
Google is not a person, unless you buy into a sick legal fiction perpetrated for the benefit of such. And "without cause"? What cave have you been living in for the last five years of news about Google wrongdoing?
sometimes doing the right thing requires evil actions.
"Do the right thing...for the shareholders, all all and any cost."
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Ganga Mata, consort of Emperor Shantanu the Great, threw her new born baby into the Ganges, not once but seven times. You see eight celestials, Guardians of the eight directions were sentenced to live as humans, for some crime[*] they committed. On appeal their sentence was commuted for seven of them, they were allowed to die as soon as possible and return as celestials. They appealed to Mother Ganges to serve as their mother and kill them before they get a chance to commit any sin and be caught in the perpetual cycle of sins and rebirths. The eighth one who had to serve a full lifetime as a human, was spared by Mother Ganges. Once you get the details, you see what mother Ganges did was not evil at all, but an act of utmost kindness.
What life the eighth one had!
He was the one originally named Satyaviradhan, later named Bheeshman and lived a long and illustrious life, torn between the allegiance he swore to his father's throne and the degenerate their Crown Prince Duryodhanan had become. He gave his life for the oath of loyalty, his blessings and love for the righteous descendants of his dynasty. He fell on the tenth day of the battle, shot by his beloved grandson Arjunan (and the first gender reassigned warrior recorded anywhere, Shikandi) and died on the following winter solstice, roughly five thousand years ago.
[*] Their crime: They stole a cow that gave ambrosia as milk for the benefit of a human friend, lied about it.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The real summary should have been: Google switches alignment, from Good or Neutral to Lawful. The old motto "Don't be evil" clearly suggests a Good or Neutral alignment, whether lawful or chaotic. The new one, "Do the right thing," implies a Lawful alignment. But that could be Good, Neutral, or Evil. Considering that one possible Lawful Evil charachter is the archetipal Overlord, who values power over all else and uses the law to maintain control, I'd say we have a match. Darth Vader and the Emperor he served had this alignment. I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords.
Still better than a few alternatives I could name, such as:
1) redefine good.
2) redefine good to mean good for google.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Google was doing evil right from the beginning and has continued with that pretty much every step of the way. At the beginning the moto, together with all the "Free" software and "Free Software" gave them the benefit of the doubt, and encouraged people to simply trust them. So, it was a con and an effective one. As they took pictures of your house. As they drove down your street, photographing you, your house, your license plate without permission -- and even actively sniffing out your IP address so they could better tag you and exploit you.... As they collected your phone number, under pretense it was for your "safety". As they moved into the phone business in order to spy on you ever more effectively and add your contacts to their cross-referencing. Etc. Etc. Etc. (I know I am preaching to the crowd here, for the most part, but occasionally it helps to step back and connect the many dots to make crystal that Google has been doing Evil with clear intention (and a lot of bullshit rationalizations and fanboy fanning; Google as been deliberate and CUNNING and manipulative and misleading...in their EVIL. Anyway, what Google is doing is something commonly done when people and, especially, companies have burned through their "good will". It is called "rebranding" and it is a major tip off to their new plans for exploitation of the human race. Google and Facebook and Monsanto and Microsoft are like those pigs in Animal Farm. Consider how well THAT story of trust and goodwill worked out for the more ordinary animals.
I'll accept being good and not very evil.
I think the new could be viewed as better than the old. Not doing anything is not evil and would therefore qualify for the old but not the new. it would have been more clear perhaps if they had said: be (or do) good. The problem with that is that would only say what was wanted when compare to the old, since good is not just the oppeosite of evil.
I think any cynical reading was clearly not intentional (you need to be quite strange to tell people that you intend to be more evil in the future) but they should have seen it coming.
Google Proved That. Classic seduction tactic - hand out candy and whisper sweet things as you slide your hands down the little kids pants.
Maybe now [after careful analysis, of course], "Being evil ..." is "Doing the right thing ..."
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there
I'm sure Hitler thought he was "doing the right thing."
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The great thing with this new slogan is the ambiguity of it. Do the right think, but just don't say WHO you are doing the right thing for. Are you doing the right thing for customers and users? Or for shareholders and executives?
Google's code is still 'Don't be evil.'
https://investor.google.com/co...
Alphabet, the new company that Google is a part of, has it's own code that is the 'Do the right thing'.
But that's a much less interesting headline.
I'm not sure that is the underlying intent; JC basically threw all the original commandments out and replaced them with but 2, the second one boiling down to "don't be a dick". It's the refusal of so-called Christians to relinquish the more fire and brimstone ones that creates the tyranny.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
"Alphabet Inc" should alter the slogan to "Do Things Right" -- that would be better, for one, it would save them some keystrokes. Cheers.
I wasn't talking about the rules of behavior for His Children; that's secondary. I was referring to the Author. I was referring to the tyrannical behavior of God himself as *ahem* "documented" in some detail in the Old Testament in particular. He Himself doesn't operate by the Ten Commandments; His behavior is worse than what is mandated by those. Dude is a full-on psycho tyrant.
You haven't been paying attention. God - or at least his minions - gets his pound of flesh.
I wasn't going to tell anybody, but I have a device that allows me to peer into the future. I came across a history piece describing the evolution of Google's moto. I'll share it:
Don't be evil.
Do the right thing.
Do the right thing if you can.
Do the right thing unless you must do otherwise.
Do what you must.
If you need to be evil, go for it.
Be Evil.
(||) Nehmo (||)
As a minister in the Universal Life Church, I say thanks Google for embracing our goal:
"To do that which is right".
Unfortunately Amazon already had 'Be Evil'
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
"do the right thing for our sharedolders" ?
Absolute statements are never true
Let's all pretend that for the past five years, Google hasn't been acting more like "don't be evil" was a patronizing directive to their less desirable users, basically equivalent to "do as I say, not as I do."
"Do the right thing" was commonly said to be the motto of DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) back in the early years of the computer business.
they have to do the righ thing because if they don't bet on the wrong projet in the future they to do the right thing....
My Alphabet : Skynet.
You've been watching too much Fox 'news' again I'm afraid. America and the modern world are ruled by the money God, in its eyes the only crime is being poor. In its eyes Google are saints and among the worlds most blessed.. We all worship at the Google shrine every day, and if you don't you should abandon the lesser search engines and return to the master.. Do the Right Thing!
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..