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What Google really means by “Don’t be evil”




















"The Google of famous mantra" Do not be evil "is not entirely what it seems." Those words do not come from a detractor of the company, but from Eric Schmidt, its chief executive, and Jonathan Rosenberg, an advisor to Larry Page, in his NEW BOOK , how Google WORKS .
From the BOOK:

Yes, it genuinely expresses a company value and aspiration that is deeply felt by EMPLOYEES. But “Don’t be evil” is mainly another way to empower EMPLOYEES… Googlers do regularly check their moral compass when making decisions.


Schmidt and Rosenberg cite the example of an engineer who, in a meeting in 2001, objected to a proposed change in the way Google’s advertising system WORKS by banging his fist on the table, yelling, “We can’t do that, it would be evil.” It is a nice anecdote, one that Schmidt clearly likes; he’s rolled it out before in an NPR interview and again at a Financial Times event in London. At that event, Schmidt also repeated the mantra that Google is “for users, not websites,” a line that has been bouncing around Google’s Europe’s policy pronouncementsfor at least four years.
WRITTEN BY


Leo Miranlmirani


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