Like self driving cars and Google Glass? Or the cheap/free fiber optic Internet access? Or free Wi-Fi in NYC? I do not think you know what evil means...
So, here it is: Google does nothing altruistically. They are an ad company, and search is a fundamental component in service to that. Data collection is one fundamental pillar, establishing Google search on every device is another.
Surely you can see how utterly insane that is? Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that Google Fiber is 100% altruistic by any means. The position that a large base of Fiber installations would put them in is enviable in a number of ways, involving several of the markets they're involved in. However, completely dismissing the possibility that they saw an opportunity to disrupt the necrotic oligopoly BS we have in the ISP market and jumping straight to "EVIL!!" is beyond ridiculous. Google certainly has done a lot of things in the last few years that belie their early image, but the amount of times that "evil" has been thrown around to describe them is just laughable.
tl;dr: The definition of "not evil" is not "a 100% charitable endeavor with no conceivable benefit".
Any company of sufficient size will be "evil", in that they will act in an anti-competitive, anti-user, or anti-interoperability way if it benefits their stock price. There is no other consideration. I'm sure everyone can think of things Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook have done that they would consider "evil" by that definition.
Building a fiber network with the primary goal of gathering data on what users do online (perhaps after clicking on a Google search result from the Google Chrome browser), and being able without any trouble whatsoever to tie that back to an individual is, if not "evil", at least fairly creepy. And there are plenty of other benefits to controlling user access literally from the desktop to the Internet backbone.
Google is not unique in this. Every large software company is trying to wall off users so they can control their access. Google, however, enjoys enormous goodwill with some people as a result of their motto and innovator status.
Self driving cars, like this http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57367893-71/a-self-driving... or http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/04/autos/toyota-self-driving-ca... or http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416535,00.asp ?
Tell me what's so amazing, never done before, about Glass? Google is seeing ads there.
Fiber and WIFI, while extremely limited in geography* and are great, until Google pulls the plug. That's the point.
*There's no "Free wifi in NYC from Google", just in a tiny neighborhood.
until Google pulls the plug. That's the point.
Google has always done that. I don't understand where the rose colored glasses about Schmidt's time come from.