7.4. DON'T DO EVIL
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.[]
—Peter F. Drucker
In the 2004 Playboy interview that played havoc with its public offering process, the writer asked whether "Don't Do Evil" was truly the company motto.
"Yes, it's real," insisted Sergey.
"Is it a written code?" asked the reporter.
"Yes," said Sergey. "We have other rules too." He added, "It's not enough not to be evil. We also actively try to be good."[]
In 2001, Google engaged its employees in an exercise of defining the company and setting goals. The company's engineers, notoriously anti-corporate, pooh-poohed the discussion. But one engineer, Paul Buchheit, spoke the words that many were thinking. Buchheit said that all the ideas kicking around could be wrapped up in the phrase, "Don't be evil." The statement resonated and stuck.
David Friedberg, who left Google to found WeatherBill, which helps companies protect themselves from damaging weather events, said that before every acquisition, the pair asked whether it could be evil. "That was always the consideration," he said.[]
Bret Taylor, who became a venture capitalist after exiting Google, said that the founders' attention to the slogan made him feel part of something special. "They always made me feel much bigger than myself."[]
7.4.1. How Google Defines Evil
Eric Schmidt once quipped that evil was whatever Sergey Brin said it was. Google's experiences show how difficult it is to pin down the definition of evil.
Brin says that there often is discussion about the definition of evil and how not to be evil. "We deal with all varieties of information," he says.
Somebody's always upset no matter what we do. We have to make a decision, otherwise there's a never-ending debate. Some issues are crystal clear. When they're less clear and opinions differ, sometimes we have to break a tie. For example, we don't accept ads for hard liquor, but we accept ads for wine. It's just a personal preference. We don't allow gun ads, and the gun lobby got upset about that. We don't try to put our sense of ethics into the search results, but we do when it comes to advertising.[]
When Mother Jones magazines asks, "Is Google Evil?," the discussion has become serious.[] "When faced with doing the right thing or doing what is in its best interests, Google has almost always chosen expediency," wrote Mother Jones.[]
As evidence, the magazine cited the incidents where Google eliminated links to an anti-Scientology site after the Church of Scientology claimed copyright infringement. In another instance, Google apparently handed over some records of social networking sites on the service Orkut to the Brazilian government. Yet, the Church of Scientology had a legitimate legal claim, and the Brazilian government was operating within its own laws in investigating alleged racial, homophobic, and pornographic content.
Google's website explains that the company will remove pages that violate U.S. law or the law of a host country, or breach its own Webmaster Guidelines.
One blogger said, "While I do not consider Google 'evil' (I reserve that label for really bad things in life), I do think that they are the big bully on the block."[]
From privacy to property rights to human rights, the scope and influence of Google have led to unintended consequences, some of them tragic:
Google has come under fire for borrowing patented or copyrighted material without permission, and for allowing AdWords advertisers to bid on trademarked keywords.
A video was posted on Google's Italian-language site showing four high school boys humiliating another young man with Down's syndrome.
Courts in Mumbai, India, were considering whether terrorists used Google Earth to help plot attacks in that city that left 170 dead and many more injured.
There are numerous areas in which Google clearly takes the moral high ground:
Google requires certification to run regulated keywords, such as those related to pharmaceuticals and other legal drugs. Some keywords, such as those related to gambling and hacking, are not allowed at all.
From June 2007, Google banned AdWords ads for student essay writing services. While most universities welcomed the move, there is no restriction on such sites appearing in the regular Google search results.
In an idea that is at the same time informative and peculiarly spooky, Google studied searches on cold, flu, and pain treatments and medications to help identify areas where flu epidemics are occurring.
7.4.2. The Motto Loses Some Shine
In the beginning, everyone was impressed and even touched by the notion that a young company would so diligently guard against bad behavior in its own ranks. Then as Google grew like Man in the Moon Marigolds, the questioning began.
"Apparently a certain percentage of any set group of people looks for signs that companies with sterling reputations are actually fronting for Satan," writes a former Googler on his website. "And of course, with Google's 'Don't be evil' motto hanging on its back like a 'kick me' sign, the company got cut very little slack."[]
Amazon CEO and Google investor Jeff Bezos observed: "Well, of course, you shouldn't be evil. But then again, you shouldn't have to brag about it either."[]
Google executives, claim some observers, have been slowly edging away from the company's famous pledge. Vice President Marissa Mayer sounded a retreat from the motto when she declared that "Don't Be Evil" never was and never would be an elected or ordained motto.
"'Don't be evil' is misunderstood," said Eric Schmidt in a 2008 interview. "We don't have an evil meter... the rule allows for conversation. I thought when I joined the company this was crap... it must be a joke. I was sitting in a room in the first six months... talking about some advertising... and someone said that it is evil. It stopped the product. It's a cultural rule, a way of forcing the conversation, especially in areas that are ambiguous."[]
7.4.3. Can Free Speech Go Too Far?
Putting the word "Jew" into the Google search box at one time instigated a scorching debate on the subject of ethics, morality, fairness, and unintended consequences. When Steven Weinstock, a New York real estate investor and former yeshiva student, searched on the word "Jew," he was horrified at the results. An aggressively anti-Jewish website called "Jew Watch" came up at the top of his search list. Weinstock went on a crusade, circulating an online petition demanding that Google remove the site from its index.
The dilemma is both painful and common: Free speech clearly is the mark of an open and democratic society, but instigating hate against any group of people is both wrong and dangerous. As unlikely as it may seem, charges floated on the Internet that Google was anti-Semitic and had purposely placed a hate-site high in its rankings.[]
Google did not remove the offensive site from its index, but apparently, for a while, included a tag at the top of the search warning people that Jew Watch contained offensive material. Some observers claim that Google now has partially blocked the site. A recent search of the word "Jew" in Google did not bring the site up, even far down the list. However, a search of the words "Jew Watch" did locate the site, and it appeared without the offensiveness warning.
Google offers this perspective:
If you use Google to search for "Judaism,""Jewish," or "Jewish people," the results are informative and relevant. So why is a search for "Jew" different? One reason is that the word "Jew" is often used in an anti-Semitic context. Jewish organizations are more likely to use the word "Jewish" when talking about members of their faith. The word has become somewhat charged linguistically, as noted on websites devoted to Jewish topics such as these.[]
Not all Jewish people object to being labeled as Jews, and not all believe that Google should block the site. "Some responsibility for this needs to rest on our own shoulders," said Jonathan Bernstein, a regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, "and not just a company like Google. We have to prepare our kids for things they come across on the Internet. This is part of the nature of an Internet world. The disadvantage is we see more of it and our kids see more of it. The advantage is, we see more of it, so we're able to respond to it. I'm not sure what people would want to see happen. You couldn't really ask Google not to list it."[]
GoogleWatch wrote: "It's not that we believe Google is evil. What we believe is that Google Inc. is at a fork in the road, and they have some big decisions to make."[]
(For more on the debate regarding right and wrong, see the chapter "Google Grows Up.")