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Privacy: Has Google Moved to the Dark Side?
Google, during its scrappy early days, Microsoft was often targeted as an ‘evil’company, primarily because of their near monopoly on the PC market. In contrast to Microsoft, Google tried to differentiate themselves as a company that does good.
In 2000, Google adopted the motto: “Do no Evil.” It was “a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent,” said Paul Buchheit, creator of GMail.
The motto was intended to imply that Google search results were objective and not affected by advertisers or other commercial objectives. It had long become part of the corporate culture.
The language of the corporate code of conduct said that “‘Don’t be evil’ is much more. 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.”
In a 2004 letter to Google shareholders, Sergey Brin wrote that “Google users trust our systems to help them with important decisions: medical, financial and many others. Our search results are the best we know how to produce.”
That’s over now though. Earlier this year, Google removed the motto from their code of conduct. While no longer officially part of the code of conduct, Google now says “And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!”
A recent report by a Norwegian company found Google and Facebook to be misleading and “unethical” in how privacy control is presented to users. The report found Microsoft actually did a much better job of allowing users to understand how privacy controls are set on their data.
