The end of "Don't be evil"

Google has decided to “downgrade” “Don’t be evil” in its employee code of conduct. I always liked the Google story and the original directive to its employees. It seemed a positive message and a laudable goal. From my perspective, Google is still less evil than the others in the big four (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google).

Citizens of the U.S. seem to be struggling with the ethics of unbridled capitalism. We live in a society that has come to question the equity of our system. It turns out that everyone does not actually have the same opportunities and our politicians are embracing the failed model of trickle-down economics moving tax dollars from the needy to large corporations. The Internet itself is no longer open with the removal of the provision preventing the companies that control our access from the opportunity to control that access often leaving citizens no opportunity to seek an alternate provider. Now, we must deal with the end of don’t be evil.

We are partly at fault. We have embraced the false promise of free. We should have known better. Most of us would seem capable of processing the impossibility of providing services and hiring employees of great talent without an obvious source of income. Yes, we saw a few small ads, but few of us ever clicked on those ads. We should have known better.


Perhaps reality has now set in. Given that “free” is an illusion, what should we expect now? Probably, the best we can hope for is transparency. Trading the record of our online behavior to Google for ads that are consistent with our interests AND free services seems a reasonable deal. Companies that collect this information and sell it to other companies is not (Facebook).

Government oversight is presently confused with socialism. People seem confused by the promotion of economic principles that are argued to be open, but are really not when examined more closely. We need regulation that actually allows for equitable competition. I am still a Google fan, but the downgrading of “Don’t be evil” is a sign of the times.