Hacker News Reader

Comment by klabb3 | Hacker News Reader

Their motto (after “don’t be evil” was phased out) was something like “organizing the information of the world, making it accessible for everyone”.

Objective failed, I guess?

View on HN

Just found out there is wikipedia page for that old motto: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil

>after “don’t be evil” was phased out

It wasn't https://abc.xyz/investor/google-code-of-conduct/

So why are they continually evil? OR are those just words on a page?

You're assuming the goal posts on evil haven't been moved. Easy to justify all of your nonsense if you lower bar of evil to "not committing genocide."

They've always been words on a page.

The idea that Google always wanted to be evil but was stymied by that pesky motto and then decided "I know, I'll change the motto (but keep it in the code of conduct) and then I'll be free to be evil" is just disconnected from reality.

It was. "Don't be evil" was their motto, since it no longer is means that it was phased out. The GP is wrong on the following motto which, IIRC, was/is "Do the right thing".

Yeah I think I mixed up the mission statement which is technically different (and more “official”) than the motto, which I believe was always unofficial and later made it into the code of conduct or something like it. When I was at Google they drilled the mission statement pretty intensely in internal comms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com