These bold slogans seem to be pretty good canaries, like when google removed "don't be evil"
(I don't care, and don't think "don't be evil" really ever meant much, but urban legends drive me a little batty.)
Still kind of upset that that immediately obvious lie back in back in 2009 paid off.
I was there in the background noise in that first reddit post, saying the obvious.
It would not surprise me one bit if it turned out that the reddit founders manipulated that one post to make it go the right way.
Don't Be Evil was relegated to a weird basement desk and had its stapler taken off it back in 2018.
1. https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...
> Preface
“Don’t be evil.” Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But “Don’t be evil” is much more than that. 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 co-workers with courtesy and respect.
The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put “Don’t be evil” into practice. ...
So really, you're implying the article claims something more extreme than it _actually_ claims... which is a little like starting your _own_ clickbait urban legend - how meta!
Google’s unofficial motto has long been the simple phrase “don’t be evil.” But that’s over, according to the code of conduct that Google distributes to its employees. The phrase was removed sometime in late April or early May, archives hosted by the Wayback Machine show.
Unless you feel the content at the end of documents doesn't count, because no one would ever actually read it...? Bit of a trap there!
That was too low hanging to leave and I know I'm being a total asshole there, which I'll try to stop -- but come on, having to read to the end isn't at all like the article is straight up lying.
The status of "unofficial motto" was conferred by the preferential position the concept was given in the doc, a symbolic gesture of corporate culture, and that entire block was removed for a much lesser reference at the end. It is made motto no more, because that specific phrase which started the doc was removed, as was reported.
Now, I grant you: a lot of people have the wrong impression of what precisely happened here, and I agree, the article is just here for the clicks. It could start off by clarifying that the idea isn't totally erased, and that might have served the precise truth better.
But the world is complex and nuanced! The thing called Google changed into a thing called Alphabet, and at that time, Alphabet dropped the phrase completely, while Alphabet's new child company (now called Google) seriously demoted the phrase+idea. Some web journalists then editorially simplified their titles about it all to get more clicks, while providing the full facts inside.
In spirit, at that time, Google kicked the ethos into a hole, and that's what people broadly understand. It's not at all like Google and its entire code of conduct are just what they ever were, and it's similarly disingenuous to claim the whole idea here is some crazy urban legend as it would be to claim that Google and friends have e.g. purged any and all references to good moral conduct from official documents -- neither is true.
But in the long view, Google stopped caring about this idea, and that popular understanding is roughly correct. That's the story, and it is not an urban legend.