Wow, where to start with this.
- Google didn’t “have” to “remove” their motto. As part of the restructuring to have Alphabet as a holding company that includes Google, Alphabet’s motto was “Do the right thing”. They argued at the time that “evil” is hard to define, and that the goal shouldn’t just be to avoid evil, but to do good. There’s nothing that made them “have” to do that. But, maybe you could argue that it generated a lot of negative press for them, so they felt pressure to change.
- The “Don’t be evil” motto is, itself, a reference to Microsoft. It came about sometime between 1999 and 2001, when Microsoft was on trial for their evil acts. Abusing their monopoly to drive Netscape out of business, in particular. Some might argue that Google has also abused their monopoly, but it would be hard to argue that they did it in the same evil way as Microsoft, who used Internet Explorer to destroy standard HTML, fractured Javascript by creating JScript, destroyed Java applets by using ActiveX controls, lied about it being impossible to remove Internet Explorer from Windows, falsified evidence at their federal antitrust trial, etc.
Basically, while you might find Google’s surveillance-capitalism model distasteful, they’re nothing like Microsoft’s true evil.
2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
Yup. Chrome is the new Internet Explorer.