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.

Comments

Paved with good intentions...

[Mr Z]

Which road was that again?

Re:Paved with good intentions...

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

ok, what circumstances are... "certain", in your view? Honestly curious. Can't think of any, myself, and I consider myself both open-minded and a creative thinker. Please elaborate.

Hmmm, what if the child was really a 1000-year old Reptilian from Jupiter who is hatching a Master Illuminati Plan to blow up the Earth and enslave all the survivors? It's a stretch, I'll admit, but what if? CHECKMATE, RATIONAL PERSON!

(Note for the humor impaired: Reptilians actually come from Saturn; I know that and was just trying to throw the NSA trackers off by citing slightly erroneous data. Carry on, nothing to see here, sharks with laser beams, in Russia something something, etc etc.)

Re:Paved with good intentions...

[nmb3000]

The only thing missing from your post was a prefix of "Previously on 24..." and a shot of Jack Bauer looking pensive :)

Re:Paved with good intentions...

[geekmux]

ok, what circumstances are... "certain", in your view? Honestly curious. Can't think of any, myself, and I consider myself both open-minded and a creative thinker. Please elaborate.

This may be an extreme example, so let me cite a more accurate one with this new loophole Google is now using as their new motto. Members of ISIS likely do not consider themselves "evil". In their minds, they're out to "do the right thing". See how the difference can be applied and justified, even in the face of something so blatantly evil as ISIS?

Anything can be justified as the "right" thing given a sick enough mind. That said, Google is a publicly traded US corporation. Their definition of "right" will always include the priority of revenue, which is not only right for a capitalist organization, it's also a mandatory survival tactic.

Re:Paved with good intentions...

[Sabriel]

Odds the 13-year-old has been told where the bomb has been planted: low.
Odds the 13-year-old will make up something even remotely believable just to make the torturing stop: not low.
Odds the 13-year-old has been told, if at all, where the enemy wants you to believe the bomb has been planted: not low.
Odds the parents and neighbours of the 13-year-old didn't notice "large quantities" of bomb-making material being delivered: not insignificant.

Odds you will fuck up by torturing a 13-year-old to no avail and create a perception that the US government finds torturing children acceptable in the eyes of its citizens, its allies and its enemies: high.

Odds that even if the torture "works", you have created a perception that the US government finds torturing children acceptable in the eyes of its citizens, its allies and its enemies: high.

If I was your CO and you did this, even if you succeeded: arrest you and throw the entire damn book at you, because you just made that kid a martyr. AQ is not an existential threat to the nation, but agents of the state endorsing or carrying out the torture of minors? Are.

Until someone decides

[Stonent1]

That being evil is the right thing to do. You know, ends justify the means and all that jazz...

Re:Until someone decides

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

The new motto should be, "Kneel Before Zod!"

What if the right thing to do is evil?

[ZipK]

I guess if you've dropped "don't be evil" and adopted "do the right thing," the answer is pretty clear.

Re:What if the right thing to do is evil?

[aaron4801]

The Right Thing for civilization isn't usually evil. The Right Thing for shareholders often is.

"Do the right thing...."

[Gaygirlie]

"....for the stockholders' wallets."

I know I won't be holding my breath here!

Re:"Do the right thing...."

[NewtonsLaw]

You've nailed it. "Do the right thing" is highly ambiguous when compared to their previous motto.

Clearly they want the wiggle-room because doing "evil" can sometimes be highly profitable.

Re:"Do the right thing...."

[geekmux]

You've nailed it. "Do the right thing" is highly ambiguous when compared to their previous motto.

Clearly they want the wiggle-room because doing "evil" can sometimes be highly profitable.

Wiggle room? That's a laugh.

Tell me, who exactly are the ignorant fools on this planet who believe that Google to date has lived up to any motto as they thrive very well in the unethical and immoral world of capitalism?

Point here is I see no reason to bullshit customers with pointless mottos or trying to claim they need "wiggle room" when their revenue-generating priorities will guarantee they won't care enough to follow them, especially when answering to shareholders who care about one fucking thing, and that one thing sure as hell ain't being right.

I can understand the change in motto

[QuietLagoon]

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.

Well, come on

[93 Escort Wagon]

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.

Do the right thing...

[Ecuador]

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!).

Have they not been watching the new Heroes series?

[bfwebster]

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."

Google is keeping "don't be evil"

[loosescrews]

From TFA:

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.

Re:Google is keeping "don't be evil"

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of the alphabet? The letters N, S, and A? Or C, I, and A? Or is that F, B, I, D, E, A?

Re:Googlers generally apply those words ..

[Opportunist]

What now, do the right thing or follow the law? C'mon, make a decision, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

They're the same..

[epyT-R]

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.

Re:They're the same..

[phantomfive]

Which is why Google has no problem collecting your information, and advertising to you based on that.
They don't consider that evil.

Re:They're the same..

[epyT-R]

They're only evil towards copyright because it resists their business model of information aggregation, and they are evil towards ibm because ibm competes with them. None of this has to do with giving a damn about doing the right thing (whatever that is).

Has a nice Machiavellian ring to it, don't you thi

[macraig]

... 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.

Millennials and "codes of conduct".

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Millennials and "codes of conduct".

[fyngyrz]

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.

Power corrupts. It's always been true, and it's still true. That's why a focus on personal and consensual choice, "your right to swing stops at my face", and liberty in general is needed to keep the error rate down to a dull roar -- just about every committee or action of a legislature is an act of exerting power. Far too often, that power is inappropriately construed, far too often that power is inappropriately applied. Classing is another wielding of power that consistently proves to be used as a means of harm and revenge. I can think of numerous examples in the technical realm, from ridiculous and irrelevant "certifications" to college degree requirements regardless of your knowledge and experience, to portions of the GPL.

As for millennials, this didn't start with them, not even close. As a 60-year old fellow, I could go on for pages with accurate stories about social codes of conduct that were (and in many cases still are) used as attempts to bludgeon people into compliance with everything from superstition (by which I primarily mean various aspects of religion), to the red scare, to the 'Murica mindset, to the ridiculously exaggerated "sex trafficking" nonsense, to drug use and the drug war, slut shaming, gangsterism, terrorism, and so on. Seems to me that you're probably just finding the millennials more annoying because for whatever reason, their behavior has clashed with your outlook -- which is not to say anyone is right or wrong, just that there's an up-front conflict.

Re:Millennials and "codes of conduct".

[mrbester]

Jesus fucking Christ that thread was painful to read.

That so many are so hell bent on pushing their agenda of having the right to be offended and the power to decry / denounce / ban anyone they don't like for whatever reason (usually based on their own flawed perception of a utopia where everybody thinks exactly like they do) is pitiful.

Has a name been attributed (a la Godwin) to the death of a thread when someone writes "Check your privilege"? Because apart from "Go fuck yourself" there isn't any response to it.

Re:Millennials and "codes of conduct".

[Intrepid imaginaut]

You can change your behaviour. You can change your opinion. You can even change your religion. You can't change the colour of your skin or whether or not you were born with nuts, drastic surgery excluded. That's why making racism and sexism of any sort acceptable, in particular under the flag of some warped version of "justice" is particularly dangerous. Because once it becomes acceptable to hate there is no final destination, it keeps on rolling until someone rolls it back, and no matter which direction the pendulum swings the situation is usually worse than it was to begin with. That's the difference.

There's a good reason collective punishment is usually viewed as a war crime. If you go down that road you end up asking why people with white skin, English, Irish, French, American, Polish, Russian, all of them aren't generally being punished for the crimes of the Nazis generations later, or even just Germans. Or why stop there, maybe Mongolia owes Iran reparations for the actions of Genghis Khan. Islamic states should pay for the conquest of Spain perhaps?

Some peoples' attitudes do need to change but what the "millennials", which is to say that subset of American youth who've been fed various offcolour sociological activist theories - not an entire generation by a long shot - need to understand is that if you rope in everyone as guilty you end up creating a reaction and creating problems which never needed to exist in the first place.

Re:Millennials and "codes of conduct".

[KGIII]

What's funny is that they don't think a majority can be the party discriminated against. I should go there and point out the traits of South Africa during the Apartheid. The black people were the majority yet were openly and ruthlessly oppressed. I'm not even white, well not entirely - I'm mixed, and even I see white people being subjected to biases because of their race. The minute you assume something about a person's being based on their skin color is the minute you become racist. If they're going to be that way then be that way openly and don't try to couch it in terms of equality and meritocracy.

I gotta finish getting ready for a movie but I'll try reading the thread first. I've only made it this far and felt compelled to reply.

Re:Millennials and "codes of conduct".

[DoofusOfDeath]

Can anyone explain to me why Millennials are so gung-ho about "codes of conduct", and why they're so hypocritical about them?

Well, I could be wrong but I suspect every generation has had problems with snobbish moralism and hypocrisy. I've heard that August Caesar claimed himself to be a first amongst equals. But I would have hated to be anyone who in his presence dared treat him as an equal. About 2000 years ago, the Jews had a group known as the Pharisees, whom Jesus is said to have excoriated for excelling at making sure everyone around them saw how well they followed Jewish ceremonial law, but ignoring God's moral laws. I.e., they were sanctimonious jerks. Etc.

But I think the bigger issue is that many of these organizations espouse code of ethics which are internally inconsistent, and yet they won't admit that. They won't admit that people might hold different moral viewpoints for reasons which are just as defensible as theirs.

For example, Google says (said) "don't be evil". But there are different groups which have very incompatible views on what's evil: Pro-lifers vs. Planned Parenthood; conservatives vs. liberals vs. libertarians vs. anarchists; Christians vs. Muslims vs. atheists; Taliban vs. the Boston Symphony, etc. It's pretty clear that Google doesn't limit its actions to only those which all of those groups consider to be not evil.

So which of those groups' definitions of "evil" does Google willingly transgress? That's how you know which religions they consider false, which ethnic groups' beliefs they consider outmoded, etc. But they will not admit this fundamental truth of moral logic. Making them, in addition to everything else, disingenuous hypocrites.

Another problem is that organizations try to side-step the issue of whose ethics are correct, but saying that the real problem is causing offense. But this means that the most-offended person in the room gets the power to suppress the speech or actions of anyone with whom he disagrees. Some of whom find that, well, offensive. It stinks of sophism inspired by the fear of lawsuits.

Re:Millennials and "codes of conduct".

[Hognoxious]

An interesting hypothesis. But have you considered the possibility that they actually are a bunch of feckless twats?

There's some big philosophical differences.

[RyanFenton]

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

We're google, we dn't care because we don't hve to

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I don't want to hold your beer

[fyngyrz]

Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users.

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.)

The gloves are off

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

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.

It's just a sad joke anyhow

[Sarusa]

'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'.

Negativity and the Subconscious

[VernonNemitz]

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.

Re:Negativity and the Subconscious

[Oligonicella]

Neither does "Do the right thing".

Re:Has a nice Machiavellian ring to it, don't you

[mrbester]

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."

C. S. Lewis

Evil too is in the eye of the beholder.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Almost everyone would say without any hesitation throwing your new born baby in the river is an evil. But is it?

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.

"Do the Right Thing" allows more room for Evil

[tanstaaf1]

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.

Re:hmmm...

[robi5]

Yeah, and sometimes, not being evil is the wrong thing to do. So what now? Both are incredibly vague, unactionable, unmeasurable things whose meanings completely hinge on interpretation and value system. It's a corporate motto, and adherence to it is impossible to measure, even if there existed common understanding about what's good and evil. I.e. it's just part of a company's PR.

Summery is Wrong

[Paxtez]

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.

Re:The problem wth tyrants is they're friendly ...

[mwvdlee]

I agree with GP.

Are you sure those evil people weren't acting out of some extreme "survival of the fittest, and I decide who's fittest" principle they thought right, instead of intentionally and knowingly being evil? Minds can become horribly twisted and self-justifying, you know.