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

Posted by msmash on from the at-least-they-are-being-honest dept.

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.

26 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. OMG, FINALLY! by gdonald · · Score: 5, Funny

    Finally, now I can get a job there! w0oh0o!

    1. Re:OMG, FINALLY! by MrKaos · · Score: 2

      Finally, now I can get a job there! MU-HAHAHA!

      FTFY!

      --
      My ism, it's full of beliefs.
  2. Four legs good, two legs better! by JoeyRox · · Score: 2

    Pretty much describes the life cycle of every country and corporation, from its idealized conception to its fall into the corrupt and greedy abyss.

    1. Re:Four legs good, two legs better! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Pretty much describes the life cycle of every country and corporation, from its idealized conception to its fall into the corrupt and greedy abyss.

      This is not true. Plenty of corporations start in the corrupt and greedy abyss right from the beginning. For instance, Microsoft never went through an "idealistic" phase. Oracle is another example of primordial slime.

    2. Re:Four legs good, two legs better! by thomst · · Score: 5, Interesting

      ShanghaiBill observed:

      Plenty of corporations start in the corrupt and greedy abyss right from the beginning. For instance, Microsoft never went through an "idealistic" phase. Oracle is another example of primordial slime.

      I've never worked for Microsoft. 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. In spring of 1992, he screwed IBM, too, by buying up every floppy disk he could find, to delay OS/2 2.0's rollout, while Microsoft vacuumed up all the PR oxygen with Windows 3.1's much-ballyhooed release. On floppies. (Yes, OS/2 2.0 was released on 17 3/5" floppies - and you could get it in 5.25", as well. Eventually. But, from February 1992 through mid-July, you couldn't buy a box of floppies for love, money, or marbles, because Microsoft had purchased every manufacturer's entire output. And it was rare, in those days, for PC's to have CD drives, believe it or not.)

      And it was interesting - in the ghoulish way passing a really bad accident on the freeway is interesing - to watch the collapse of IBM's otherwise-carefully-planned rollout of their vastly-superior OS. The panic in the IBM guys who came by our lab space at Wells steadily mounted, as the weeks since the official release date ticked by, and the continuing floppy shortage kept anyone but major potential customers (like Wells Fargo, where I was a senior technology analyst) from being able to get their hands on the darned thing anywhere but at IBM authorized dealers. And then only to kick the demo version around on the store's computers, not to buy a copy themselves. (In late March, our sales rep gave us an advance copy to evaluate, with the exhortation, "Take care of that. You probably won't see another one for quite a while." When I asked him if we could make a backup copy, he said, "Officially speaking, I should say 'No.' Unofficially, though, it's probably a good idea.")

      Once upon a time, however, I did work for Orace. (As a contractor, rather than as a FTE.)

      I had recently left Wells (this was at the end of 1992, before the swine who ran NationsBank ate them, jettisoned all the top execs I'd known, and assumed the Wells identity, even though it was a considerably smaller entity, because their own brand was absolute poison), and I naively believed that place had been a shark tank. I swiftly found out that Wells was full of mere guppies, instead. Oracle, by comparison, was a freakin' piranha swarm.

      As just one example of the work environment at Oracle: I had set up a shared, $10,000 Tektronix Phaserjet, wax-transfer color printer for an Oracle sales department. (Cost of consumables? About two bucks a page, depending. Even the special, clay-surface paper was expensive. And the four, separate, rolls of wax-surface, color printing medium? Yikes!) One day they called me to say that it had stopped working, and one of their employees needed to be on a flight to Europe pronto, with color printouts of his Powerpoint deck in hand an absolute priority.

      So I drove to Redwood Shores (which took nearly an hour), and, after visually inspecting the printer, determined that its power cable was missing. I substituted one from a nearby workstation (whose user was on a marketing trip to Asia, which meant he had no immediate need for it), and the marketing guy easily made his flight, 4-color printout in hand. Then I went looking for the missing power cable from the printer (which, with the Tektronix logo stamped on it, was pretty distinctive). I found it, too.

      Some guy from another department (in a different silo on that same floor) had filched it to supply power to his personal laser printer - and then walked away, without replacing it, leaving an entire department that depended on the Phaserjet with no way to print its slides.

      I confiscated the cable, of course, and took it ba

      --
      Check out my novel.
    3. Re:Four legs good, two legs better! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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

      No, neither Bill Gates nor Microsoft did steal anything from DRI, including CP/M. If CP/M was ever stolen, it was by Tim Paterson, who had nothing to do with MS back then. And BTW, Paterson didn't steal CP/M; he merely created a CP/M work-alike OS, that ran on Intel 8086, and its APIs were designed to be backward-compatible with these of CP/M, which, together with the 8080-to-8086 source code compatibility, made porting software to the new OS almost trivial. Later, Paterson won a lawsuit for defamation against some DRI fanbois, who, just like you, accused him of theft, so, if you want to donate some money to Mr. Paterson, you may continue with your accusations.

    4. Re: Four legs good, two legs better! by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.')

    5. Re:Four legs good, two legs better! by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  3. Back in 2015 they dropped it by 0xdeaddead · · Score: 2

    as part of fucking over their employees out of stock, as they became the 'alphabet company' aka the play on 'alphabet agency'.

    Google is VERY VERY Evil.

  4. They finally realized by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Funny

    Someone at Google read through all of the things Google has been in the news for in recent years, and it hit them: Hey, we're the baddies

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re: They finally realized by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How could they be the 'baddies' when a top Google executive made personal visits to the White House averaging more than once a week while Obama was president? Weren't they just spreading their pure-good ethos to the government?

  5. Warrant Canary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You all may joke, but I'd wager something really nefarious happened at Google and this is the warrant canary.

  6. That Settles It by mentil · · Score: 2

    Whenever I want to know about the ethics of a megacorporation's activities, I pore over a document on their website. It's all right there in the manual, people! If they pinkie-swear that they'll be the mostest ethicalest conglomerate ever, then goddammit, I believe them!

    Obviously, removing a vow to not be evil means they've accepted an ethical continuum where any action taken in a situation containing an ethical problem necessarily involves a certain amount of evil; vowing to do NO evil would necessarily mean taking no action, which is itself an evil action, thereby they are avoiding a double bind.

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  7. Defining objective evil. by RyanFenton · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've found that the best definition of evil that applies across all culture and times is the following:

    Intentionally harming others to benefit yourself.

    Whether that benefit is emotional, resources, or a political cause, it's all in the direction of what most cultures would consider more and more evil.

    Without harm, it's generally more mischief or taboo, and without any form of benefit from that harm, it's generally considered more madness/confusion or misunderstanding. Without intention, it's considered an accident, though blatant enough recklessness its own intention in many cases.

    Discarding the intention to avoid evil, because it might make you more money is definitely going in the evil direction in my book at least.

    Ryan Fenton

    1. Re:Defining objective evil. by RyanFenton · · Score: 2

      >Winning honestly at chess is evil by this definition, especially if it is a high-stakes game that will direct significant monetary sums and professional reputation to the winner. You would be intentionally causing a harm to your opponent to benefit yourself.

      See: lack of actual harm. If you added perhaps using cruel tricks to give you an unfair advantage, then yeah - you're getting in the direction of evil. But just exchanging moves and winning doesn't connect those dots, for most cultures. I'm just attempting to match common sense for most cultures with this definition of evil.

      If the bet were large enough to harm either party to a large extent, then the evil may be more in the act of setting up the bet, more than the game. Like, in many cultures there's stories of devil's contests - fiddling contests and the like aren't the immorality in those stories. It's in settings up the contest with the intent to likely harm.

      Ryan Fenton

  8. Re:hello 2015? by msmash · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, they did not kill it. They had a new motto for Alphabet, but Google's CoC continued to have instances of "don't be evil." Here's a version of its CoC, captured in January this year by Internet Archive.

  9. Re:Does this matter? by h33t+l4x0r · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yes but, importantly, it means that Google can no longer fire employees for being evil. This is a big civil rights win for Satan-worshipping coders.

  10. Re: hello 2015? by MachineShedFred · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It may have still been on paper, but that practice was not followed for years. Now the code of conduct is more aligned with what the organization actually does.

    The tail wagging the dog, so to speak.

    --
    Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  11. Re:Don't do the right thing then? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

    Well, you see, they can’t - Spike Lee sued them over the use of that phrase.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  12. It's still at the bottom, you absolute twats. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    "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.

    1. Re:It's still at the bottom, you absolute twats. by novakyu · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  13. Re:Does this matter? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Informative

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

    clearly you've never done business with Oracle.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  14. "All your attention are belong to us!" by shanen · · Score: 2

    A couple of years ago, before my old friends who had joined google started ghosting me, we used to meet for a few beers from time to time. It was becoming pretty obvious that the evil thing was moot, and I realized the new motto was:

    "All your attention are belong to the google."

    Details at 11.

    --
    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
  15. Capitalism is dead. Long live corporate cancerism by shanen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Good comment and deserves the insightful mod, even though you didn't address the underlying religious issue:

    "There is no gawd but Profit, and the google wants to be Profit's #1 prophet."

    Right now Apple holds the title (according to Fortune), but they are evil and cancerous in different ways. The noncancerous corporations have mostly been crushed out of the market or bought out and merged.

    It amuses me to imagine there could be solution approaches. My current favorite would be a progressive tax on corporate profits, where the rate increases with market share. NOT a penalty to success, but rather an incentive to reproduce by fission, providing more competition, more choices, and more freedom for the human beings. The REAL human beings, not the legal fictions like corporate persons.

    --
    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
  16. Don't be merely evil by goombah99 · · Score: 2

    Don't be evil, be heinous.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
  17. Re:It does't fit Google's new morality by yuriklastalov · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's kind of funny that those researchers only got huffy about their research being used for military purposes but all the social engineering and other fuckery Google does is just fine.

    I'm sure they unironically believe the US military exists for the explicit purpose of killing brown people and that Google just wants to "make the world a better place".