Google Removes 'Don't Be Evil' Clause From Its Code of Conduct (gizmodo.com)

Kate Conger, reporting for Gizmodo: Google's unofficial motto has long been the simple phrase "don't be evil." But that's over, according to the code of conduct that Google distributes to its employees. The phrase was removed sometime in late April or early May, archives hosted by the Wayback Machine show.

"Don't be evil" has been part of the company's corporate code of conduct since 2000. When Google was reorganized under a new parent company, Alphabet, in 2015, Alphabet assumed a slightly adjusted version of the motto, "do the right thing." However, Google retained its original "don't be evil" language until the past several weeks. The phrase has been deeply incorporated into Google's company culture -- so much so that a version of the phrase has served as the wifi password on the shuttles that Google uses to ferry its employees to its Mountain View headquarters, sources told Gizmodo.

Comments

It's still at the bottom, you absolute twats.

[Anonymous Coward]

"And remember don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!"

https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html

Literally, literally fake news.

Re:It's still at the bottom, you absolute twats.

[novakyu]

Unless the Gizmodo article was updated since its publication without notice, they note that in the article.

The updated version of Google’s code of conduct still retains one reference to the company’s unofficial motto—the final line of the document is still: “And remember don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!”

It's called "burying the lede," and quite common in the news business. So, business as usual---also, I guess you are right, literal fake news.

Re:Does this matter?

[serviscope_minor]

Don't be evil. Do the right thing. Everyone agrees with those words

clearly you've never done business with Oracle.

Re: Four legs good, two legs better!

[Bing Tsher E]

People like GP commenter cop an attitude like they were even around during the introduction of the PC. At the time, you could buy both PC-DOS and CP/M-86 from IBM to run on their PC. CP/M was about twice as expensive, and wouldn't really run the old programs from 8-bit CP/M anyway.

There was some synergy in buying PC-DOS for the OS. Microsoft produced the built-in BASIC interpreter that booted up from the ROMs in the IBM-PC if you bought one without floppy drives or disk controller (a 180k SSDD floppy drive was north of $500) and ran your PC with cassette BASIC. (the cassette interface cable was standard equipment until the introduction of the PC/XT.) PC-DOS came with the extended Disk BASIC at no cost versus CP/M-86 which was twice the price and didn't have BASIC included. Microsoft BASIC was an additional package you has to purchase for CP/M.

BASIC was important in that era, and Microsoft was mostly a 'language' company in that era, producing thd BASIC interpreter for most computer brands.. A lot of early PC users wrote their own software in BASIC or typed it in from listings in magazines targeted to all the different personal computers like the Atari, Commodore and Apples, etc.

The above details are just some of the wrinkles in the history that are often overlooked. It's far more complex than 'Microsoft stole CP/M' and the history is even interesting (if you're a nerd and not some IT dude reading a 'tech' site who took CS in college to 'make money.')

Re:Four legs good, two legs better!

[squiggleslash]

It's certainly true, though, that Gates stole CPM from Gary Kildall, and (after modifying it to run on a then-incompatible filesystem) sold it to IBM, as PC-DOS, for mucho dinero.

It certainly isn't true, not even remotely.

Microsoft bought MS DOS from Seattle Associates, a seller of 8086 cards for S-100 systems, which had called the OS QDOS. QDOS itself had little to do with CP/M, it had an entirely different filesystem (Microsoft's FAT file system, which was written for early standalone Microsoft BASIC implementations intended to run without needing a seperate operating system), had a different toolset, different CLI, and was only similar to CP/M in one respect: it exported a similar, but not identical, API for applications to use. The latter was to make it easier to port CP/M applications to QDOS.

That part, like the rest of the operating system, was written from scratch, but if it hadn't been, the amount of code Seattle Associates would have "stolen" would have amounted to a tiny percentage of CP/M, literally a few hundred bytes of code, because all the complexity was in the file system and command line tools. I mention this not to suggest that if they did it it wouldn't have been a problem, I mention this to give you some idea of how ludicrous the allegation is: "Let's write a whole new operating system, but for no reason let's illegally copy a few hundred bytes from CP/M when it would be easier for us to write the same code afresh." That's how stupid the allegation is.

Microsoft's first product was BASIC. They bought MSDOS. MSDOS was not a copy of CP/M or based upon it. IBM knew what it was getting into when it bought a license. Compaq, not Microsoft, started the clones movement (Microsoft sold MS DOS to companies like ACT/Apricot before that, who were producing machines completely incompatible with IBM's.)

Microsoft was fairly neutral as a technology company until the Windows vs GEM thing started up. That snowballed into DOS/Windows vs DR DOS, Windows vs OS/2, and all the other slimy things they did. But for the first 10-15 years they were relatively normal.